Jessye Norman Interview (page: 6 / 9) Legendary Opera Soprano	Print Interview

What is the most unusual thing that you've ever sung? What are people surprised to hear Jessye Norman sing?

Jessye Norman: I'm trying to think of the name of the song. It's quite incredible because we did a benefit some years ago for the rainforest in Brazil that was organized by Sting and Trudie Styler, his wife, at Carnegie Hall. I was singing with Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen and James Taylor. It was a whole bunch of guys and me, so we were having a great time and we were singing something or the other of Elvis Presley. What was the song? It's gone straight out of my head, but I had to learn it because I didn't know it, but we had the most fun, and people were very surprised.

You really love to sing.

Jessye Norman: I really do. I really do. As I always say, I think it helps to be a bit of a ham, that you really like getting out there and doing it, because I truly do.

Is there anybody you'd like to sing with that you haven't yet sung with?

Jessye Norman: Yes. Herbie Hancock. I'd like to sing with Herbie Hancock playing the piano.

Do you like jazz?

Jessye Norman: Yes, I love jazz.

Can you scat?

Jessye Norman: Oh yes. I do it all the time. I've been singing jazz now for a few years, and I have to tell you that I have a very good time with it. Early in my professional life I thought, "Oh no, I can never do that. No, no, absolutely. That's a whole different sort of line of study. There's no way that I could possibly..." But of course, after all those years of singing to my Ella Fitzgerald and Carmen McRae recordings, I'm doing it.

How would you explain, to someone who knows nothing about your field, what makes it so exciting for you?

Jessye Norman: What is exciting about this field of endeavor? Singing? I think that I find excitement in being able to communicate a thought to an audience, without that being necessarily in the language of that particular person, but that by the way in which -- I hope -- that I'm singing, they would get the essence of what it is about which I'm singing. That is exciting for me.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I went some years ago to Greece, and we were going to do an entire program in English: the sacred music of Duke Ellington, with gospel choir, sort of spiritual dancer, jazz combo, jazz ensemble, pianists, the whole thing in this wonderful amphitheater, of course, created before the birth of Christ, practically. We call it Epidorus, but the Greeks call it Epidoros, and there we were standing on the same piece of marble that Socrates stood on. I mean these things are just surreal to me. I was very concerned about singing in English the entire time, and singing music that wasn't known. I mean, we know "Sophisticated Lady" and "Take the A Train," and so on, but we're not quite so familiar with the sacred music of Duke Ellington. But the moment you hear it, you know that it's Duke Ellington, whether or not you've heard the music before or not. And I was concerned about that, and I needn't have been. Because the audience, even though -- imagine we are outside, it's summertime and of course there's a full moon, it was absolutely stunning -- and it was as quiet, that 15,000 people sitting in that amphitheater, it was quieter than singing in a church. And one understood from the quality of the silence that people were listening, that they weren't just being quiet until the concert was over. It was a listening quiet. You could sense that. And after it was over, they expressed their joy in having heard this music, and it was overwhelming. I shall never forget that night as long as I live.

You had already performed in most of the great opera houses in Europe long before you made your first operatic appearance in the United States. Your Berlin debut was in 1969, you said, but you didn't perform in American opera houses until 1982. Why did you wait so long?

Jessye Norman: I waited so long because I was waiting for a very good reason, and that was to be offered a role that would be suitable for me. Maybe I'm being incorrect in this, but I actually sang Aïda with the Orlando Opera Company in the '70s. And it wasn't until 1982 that I was offered something that I thought, "Now this will be a good way to sing opera in the United States." It was with the Philadelphia Opera. I was asked to do Oedipus rex of Stravinsky along with Dido and Aeneas of Henry Purcell. I thought, first of all, it was a very interesting double bill, and that was the thing that interested me enough to say, "Okay, let's do it." And then the next year I sang for the 100th anniversary first night of the Met in New York.

How did that feel?

Jessye Norman: That felt wonderful. I had no idea that it would mean so much to so many other people. It never occurred to me that anybody was paying attention to that, but the amount of mail that I received from people saying, "Thank goodness you've finally come to the opera house here in New York." I had been offered roles at the opera house in New York for ten years, it's just that it hadn't been anything that I felt would be suitable for me, or that I would enjoy doing. So I was very lucky, in that they hadn't lost interest and continued to ask, but I had no idea that it meant anything to anybody else. Truly. I just wasn't thinking that.

Didn't you realize that while you were singing in Europe, everybody was hearing about you here in the United States? They knew who you were and they wanted you to come home.

Jessye Norman: I never thought about it. I was singing very often in the States with orchestras, singing recitals with piano, so I was singing. I just wasn't singing in the opera house. It never occurred to me that anybody else was thinking about it, I promise you. It's amazing.

You seem to have a special affinity for the German repertoire, particularly the works of Richard Strauss. Does his music have special meaning for you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Jessye Norman: I think Strauss had a very special way -- and this might be due to the fact that he was married to a singer -- but he had a wonderful way of writing for the female voice. Anybody that sings his music says the same thing. It is written in such a wonderful way. He understood how the female voice functions, and there's just so much, for which I'm just so grateful, for the music of Strauss. It's given me such a presentation of music for so long in my performance life, whether it's the opera Ariadne or whatever, or the "Four Last Songs" of Strauss. I can't imagine what my life would be like minus those songs. I can't even imagine it.

Do you think you have an affinity for German music because your career really began in Germany?

Jessye Norman: Yes, I'm sure. Because there were so many singers at the time that were singing recitals. When I started working you still had Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig, Hermann Prey, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and these are just four of the big names. Irmgard Seefried, all of these people. I had the experience of listening to so many singers sing this repertoire, and it was so inspiring, because they made it seem so natural and so easy. Of course, it is everything except easy. I was inspired by the work that they did, and by the fact that they could have a full house. They were singing, very quietly, some songs of Hugo Wolf, some songs of Johannes Brahms, some songs of Mozart or Beethoven. There was no stage set. There was nothing spectacular about what was happening on stage except the piano and the voice. It was a wonderful time to be a kid in this profession.

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