Jessye Norman - The Diva
The music world was quick to recognize her extraordinarily talented voice and showered her with invitations for concert, recital and television appearances. Jessye Norman toured extensively in the 1970s, performing throughout the United States, South America, Australia, Canada and Europe. She regularly appeared at various music festivals, including Tanglewood, Ravinia, Edinburgh, Flanders, Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg. She has sung a widely varied operatic repertoire at a host of locations: from the Lincoln Center to Covent Garden, Carnegie Hall to the Musikverein, from La Scala to the Paris Opera and the Vienna State Opera, from Tokyo to San Francisco, Houston and Boston, from Granada to Graz and Hong Kong.
Jessye Norman is equally at home with American spiritual songs and French chansons as she is with German Lieder. As an opera singer she is particularly remembered as Mozart's Countess Almaviva, Strauss' Ariadne and Stravinsky's Jocasta. From Haydn to Mahler to Schoenberg and Berg, from Satie and Poulenc to Gershwin and Bernstein, the range of Norman's musical reach has been spectacular.
Her Metropolitan Opera debut in Berlioz's Les Troyens (in which she sang both Dido and Cassandra) opened the Met's centenary season in 1983. During the years 1988-1989, she made history by appearing in the Metropolitan's first presentation of a one-character opera, Schoenberg's Erwartung, on a "Live from the Met" telecast. It also featured her as Judith in Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle. The soprano is also known to television audiences worldwide for her 1987 special Christmastide and for the film Jessye Norman Sings Carmen, a documentary chronicling her much anticipated recording of the Bizet opera, released in early 1990. She was also seen by millions in July 1989 singing the Marseillaise at the spectacular Bastille Day festivities celebrating the bicentenary of the French Revolution The performance was telecast throughout the world.
This legendary singer was born into a musical family and learned the piano as a child. She gave her first public performance at the age of six when she sang Jesus Is Calling. Norman pursued her formal musical studies at Howard University, then later at the Peabody Conservatory and the University of Michigan.
Jessye Norman has won international acclaim for her astoundingly diverse operatic repertoire and concert appearances with symphony orchestras. She has received some thirty prestigious honorary doctorates from colleges and universities, decorations, distinctions and appointments from governments around the world. Her honorary doctorates include those from Howard University, the Boston Conservatory, Cambridge University, the American University of Paris, the Juilliard School of Music and Yale University. In 1984, the French government honored Jessye Norman with the title " Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters" and followed this by awarding her the Legion of Honor. In the same year the National Museum of Natural History in Paris named an orchid after her. In November 1987 she became an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London She was a recipient of the 1990 Albert Einstein College of Medicine Annual Achievement Award. In 1990 Jessye Norman was named honorary ambassador to the United Nations by UN secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.
Norman also remains one of the most prolific recording artists of the day. Her discography has won numerous awards, including the Paris Grand Prix National du Disque for albums of Lieder by Wagner, Schumann, Mahler and Schubert. She has also received the prestigious Gramophone Award in London for her outstanding interpretation of Strauss's Four Last Songs, the Edison Prize in Amsterdam, and recording prizes in Belgium, Spain and Germany. In the United States, Jessye Norman won a Grammy Award as "Best Classical Vocalist" for Songs of Maurice Ravel.
When Jessye Norman performed for the first time at the International Beethoven Festival in Bonn last year, she received no fewer than six standing ovations. But perhaps the greatest honor for the artist is the one bestowed upon her by her own hometown: In Augusta, Georgia, the Amphitheater and Plaza overlooking the tranquil Savannah River have been named after Jessye Norman.