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Jessye Norman
Legendary Opera Soprano
I think one of the things, when I talk to younger performers, whether they're singers or violinists or pianists, is that I feel that I have encouraged them to go beyond the limitations of the box in which we can be placed as classical performers. That it really is all right to be a cellist, and to play the Elgar Concerto, but to be also interested in the music of the Silk Road, as Yo-Yo Ma has shown so brilliantly. That the music need not have been composed originally for the classical cello. That doesn't mean that you can't play it, and that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be interested in it. Why should a person who's playing the Brahms Second Piano Concerto not be interested in the ragtime music of Scott Joplin? Why should a singer who's singing Mimi -- a Puccini (role) -- not be interested in the music of Cole Porter? I feel that we so often limit ourselves, because we think that we have to follow a certain line, that we have to follow and do what's been done before, instead of finding our own paths and making our own way. I hope that my performance life encourages -- particularly other singers -- not to be limited, not to be put into a box and to be told, "You are that kind of soprano, so therefore this is the kind of music that you're supposed to sing." I said one clever thing -- and I say this all the time -- I said one clever thing in my entire life, and I was asked this question when I was about 23 or 24 years old. When I was doing probably the second interview I'd ever done in my life, and the interviewer said, "What kind of soprano are you? You sing this and you sing that and you've got sort of fiorituri possibilities.." meaning sort of like coloratura sopranos, " so what kind of soprano are you exactly?" And so then I said, in all of my sort of 23 or 24 years, "I think that pigeon holes are only comfortable for pigeons."
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Jessye Norman
Legendary Opera Soprano
Jessye Norman: I love to quote Einstein, when he actually said that, for him, the gift of fantasy, the act of creativity in his life -- the brilliant life of this brilliant man -- that the act of fantasy, creativity, had meant more to him in his life than the ability for absorbing knowledge. Can you imagine that? From Einstein? That the gift of going into one's own mind and thinking of something, thinking that there could be something called the Internet that could connect people all over the world through a little machine that is on your desk, or on your lap or nowadays in your handbag. From where does it come? It comes from deeply inside of us. It comes from that place that is not trying to do anything except live. It isn't thinking about whether or not this is a good idea, whether or not anybody else is going to think this is good, whether it's a workable idea. It is simply there. And some people have the courage to go with it. I had the privilege of seeing Bill Gates receive an award last night and had a chance to chat to him just a moment. When I think of my friends that were in California at the time that there was something in Bill Gates's garage that he wanted people to see, and that he thought was going to be something very interesting, and there were people that were smart enough to say, "Okay, I'll go with you," and other people that said, "Don't be so silly," that he kept going anyway. And look where it has taken us. And people working in this field in technology tell us we are only at the beginning.
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Sir Trevor Nunn
Theatrical Director
There was a brown volume and I pulled it down and it was the works of William Shakespeare. And my response to it was, "I want to find a speech that I can read out to everybody." Not, "I want to take this book off into a corner and I want to discover about a whole play, and I want to read it privately to myself." And so, with a strange precocity, I would stand in the corner of the room and I would deliver Shakespeare's speeches, with no sense whatsoever of the context, or of the role that I was playing. I mean, I would gradually begin to put two and two together with these speeches, and begin to understand what must be going on in the play. I still have that volume, because my aunt gave it to me when I was going off to university. That's a very treasured possession. But, I just have to be grateful for whatever gift was handed on to me. In terms of performing, yes of course, I used to feel nerves. I used to feel adrenaline, but I also used to feel a huge magnetism. I really want to do this. I would be terribly disappointed if anything would get in the way of my being cast in something, or performances being canceled. It was a fix that I obviously needed.
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Sir Trevor Nunn
Theatrical Director
I have been through experiences with given productions, where I felt to an acute degree, "I can't do this." or "I can't do this, anymore. Whatever judgment I had it's gone." It's a hard lesson to learn, too. You would think, as you do plays, or works for television, works on film, that you pick up where you left off. You assume that you have learned all the lessons of your last outing and then you pick up right where you left off, and the truth is you don't. You pick up somewhere in the midst of an unknown project and you flounder often the same way. You repeat mistakes that you've made before. You say to yourself, "I don't believe that. I made that mistake 10 years ago, how have I done that again? And how did I not see I was doing that again?" So, yes. All of those things have happened to me. And equally, I've experienced the opposite. I've experienced a private doubt, something that I've kept deeply inside and then eventually delivered a piece of work that people responded to with huge enthusiasm. And then, that's been sort of a launch pad for a very good period, you know. "I do know what I'm doing. I do trust my ideas. That odd dream that I had two nights ago, I'm going to go with that. This imagery in there, I think I know what that's about, and I'm going to go with that. And I'm going to apply that to this play." You know, there's a lot of potentially hubristic activity in directing, following a random idea and trusting to it. But then of course, the pendulum can swing too far the other way, and you continue to trust your craziest of ideas and you come crashing down.
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