Jessye Norman Interview (page: 4 / 9) Legendary Opera Soprano	Print Interview

Have you ever had any doubts about your ability?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Jessye Norman: I don't think that I have had doubts about my ability. What I certainly have had doubts about, particularly as a very young performer, was being allowed to have what I felt -- and what a lot of people felt -- as my potential to catch up with my age, or perhaps it was vice versa. I'll give you an example. As a very young singer, I was invited to the opera house in Berlin by the then-director of the opera house, Egon Seefehlner, and I had one opera to my name that I knew. He felt that there was a lot that I could learn there, which was very true, and I was so lucky to be able to have this opportunity. The thing that was happening is that I kept being offered operas that I knew that I wasn't ready to sing, just from an experience point of view, as well as being 24 years old. So I was always asked to sing things that I thought, "Well no, I really don't think I should sing that now. I need to sing that maybe in five years, or maybe in 10 years, but not right now. Couldn't I please sing something else?" And that became a difficulty for me. And after being at the opera house for three years, and singing Elsa and Elisabeth -- the Wagner roles that are not sort of the heavy Wagner roles -- and then Mozart operas that suited my voice at the time, I was continually invited to sing things that I just felt I shouldn't. So I took it upon myself to go to speak with the artistic director to say that I thought I should leave the opera house, and come back in some years when my maturity sort of chronologically would have caught up with the invitations that I was being offered. Of course, considering that he'd taken me into the opera house when I knew one role, he wasn't all that happy. I thought he'd say, "Oh, what a smart girl. Oh yes, absolutely. That's what we'll do." No, no. He was absolutely furious.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

At 24 years old, did you have someone telling you these things or did you know yourself that you weren't ready?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Jessye Norman: Imagine Berlin at the time: Herbert von Karajan directing the Berlin Philharmonic. You had all of these wonderful -- I lived across the street from the Schiller Theater, which is still one of the great theaters in Germany, where I would go and listen to really well-spoken German. So there was a lot that I was learning, just from being in that particular place at the time. I went to the opera practically every night. I went to something practically every night, just learning and seeing and absorbing, and what I noticed is that there were singers that were only sort of slightly older than I whose voices sounded as though they were many decades older than that, and didn't sound pretty, and I needed to understand what was happening. I mean there were singers that were 28 or 30 years old or something, and I would speak to them afterwards to say, "Was your voice tired tonight? Tell me what's happening," because I didn't understand it. Their voices should have sounded fresh and blooming and wonderful, but instead they sounded different, and it was because they were singing a different opera every night, and singing whatever was offered, and I didn't understand and needed to understand -- because no one was telling me these things -- why they just didn't say no. Why didn't they just say, "Oh no, I don't think I should." Because it certainly could have happened that I could have been fired earlier in the process, but I didn't have sense enough to worry about that. I was more concerned about preserving myself.

How did you come to Germany in the first place?

Jessye Norman: It's a wonderful story. A very wealthy industrialist by the name of J. Ralph Corbett from Cincinnati, Ohio happened to be married to a person who had wanted to be a singer. She was supportive of the Cincinnati Opera and they supported practically single-handedly the Cincinnati Symphony, and they wanted to broaden their interest in supporting young American singers. They had the idea, along with some people in the classical music world that they trusted, and had discussions about how they might help American singers to get going, because there really wasn't a lot of financial support. They had the brilliant idea that instead of having American singers traipse all over Europe singing for various directors of opera houses, because they were in a position to do so financially, they would invite 25 directors of opera houses from all over Europe to come to the United States for two weeks. They could wine and dine them in New York, take them to the concerts, to the opera, to the theater, and during the day they had to sit there and listen to American singers all day long. Somehow I was invited to be a part of this.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I went along at my appointed time -- it was in New York -- and sang for this group of directors from opera houses all over the place. I sang the second aria from Tannhäser, which is one of the early operas of Wagner, and it was a very good choice, because you're only accompanied by the brass instruments in the orchestra, which means unless you have very good breath control you can't do this aria. It is very slow, and it's very hymn-like in the way that it's composed. It's not a lot of orchestral accompaniment that is kind of brilliant and spectacular. It really is a prayer, and so either you can pull it off or you can't. You really can't sort of cheat on it. And it's, again, one of these fantasy stories. Egon Seefehlner was one of the directors that was sitting there. He actually came backstage after I finished my little presentation and he said to me, "Do you know the rest of that opera?" And so I said, "No, but I could know it by next week." And he said, "It doesn't need to be quite so early. You would have time." So this was in May of a year, and he said, "I have looked at my calendar all through the time that you were singing, and I could offer you a date in November to sing this opera at my opera house." I said, "Fine. Wonderful." I mean at 23, what is not possible, you know? So I said, "That sounds like a good idea."

So I set about working that opera backwards and forwards and up and down. I knew everybody's part. I went to Duke University to study conversational German, because I had no intention of going to Germany and not being able to talk. I didn't know whether or not people spoke English. There was no reason that I could imagine this. It sounds like I'm making it up, but I went to rehearsals, and went to my costume fittings, which were rather different from having a costume fitting at the University of Michigan for the operas that we did there. I sang the performance, and after the second act, which is the act in which my character first appears, Egon Seefehlner actually came to my dressing room. The opera wasn't finished and he said, "This is going very well. I'd like to offer you a three-year contract." So I said, "But Dr. Seefehlner, I haven't finished the opera." And he said, "The aria that's coming up in the third act, that's the one you sang in New York and I know that you can sing it."

Were you in graduate school when you went to New York and did this?

Jessye Norman: Yes, I was in graduate school at the University of Michigan.

You left there and moved to Germany and the rest is history.

Jessye Norman: Well yes, we're still trying to make it.

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