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Great Lives from History: American Women

Jessye Norman

by Fusako Hamao, Micah L. Issitt

Opera singer

Norman is a dramatic soprano with an exceptionally wide vocal range, an impeccable vocal technique, and a highly expressive style. As an opera singer and recitalist, Norman has performed and recorded numerous works, from baroque music to spirituals.

Born: September 15, 1945

Area of Achievement: Music: classical and operatic, Music: spirituals

Early Life

Jessye Mae Norman (JEH-see may NOHR-man) was born in Augusta, Georgia, to Silas Norman and Janie-King Norman. Her father was an insurance company manager, her mother a schoolteacher. Both parents were amateur musicians. As one of five children of the musical family, Norman began singing spirituals at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in her hometown at the age of four. When Norman was nine, she heard a New York Metropolitan Opera broadcast on the radio. Fascinated by the performance, she began listening to recordings of great singers such as Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price.

At the age of sixteen, on a recommendation from her high school choir director, Norman entered the Marian Anderson Vocal Competition in Philadelphia. Although she did not win, she visited Carolyn Grant, a professor in the Department of Music at Howard University in Washington, D.C., on her way home. Grant was impressed by Norman's singing and arranged a full scholarship for her to attend the university for the next four years. After Norman graduated cum laude in 1967, she spent the following summer at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. In the fall of 1967, Norman entered the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she studied with Pierre Bernac and Elizabeth Mannion.

In 1968, Norman won first prize at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich, which resulted in engagements in Germany and recital tours in Europe. In December, 1969, Norman made her debut with the Deutsche Oper Berlin as Elisabeth in Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser. In 1972, she made her debut at La Scala in Milan, where she performed the title role in Giuseppe Verdi's Aida. Norman performed the same role at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles the following summer. She made her debut at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London, singing Cassandra in Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens in September of the same year.

Life's Work

Having established herself as an opera singer, Norman began producing recordings in the early 1970s. She recorded songs by Franz Schubert and Gustav Mahler and selections from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro in 1971. Norman toured throughout Europe and the United States from 1973 to 1975. After moving to London in 1975, however, she did not appear on the opera stage for the next five years. During this period, she performed with orchestras as a soloist and sang recitals while producing recordings such as Michael Tippett's oratorio A Child of Our Time.

In 1980, Norman returned to live opera, singing the title role in Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at the Hamburg State Opera in Germany. In 1982, she made her debut with the Philadelphia Opera as Dido in Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and as Jocasta in Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. Norman made her Metropolitan Opera debut in September, 1983, where she again sang Cassandra in Les Troyens. In 1987, she sang the “Liebestod” aria from Wagner's Tristan und Isold with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan at the Salzburg Music Festival.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Norman expanded her repertoire by singing operatic roles from modern composers, such as Woman in Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung and Judith in Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, both of which were produced in 1989 at the Metropolitan Opera. Norman took a unique approach in her recitals: in the Songbook series with James Levine at Carnegie Hall in 2001, the audience received a songbook beforehand that included the texts of 175 songs, but the actual program was announced only on the evening of each concert. Norman performed in a 2013 production of Ask Your Mama at the Apollo Theatre, based on the Langston Hughes composition. She also performed in a 2014 Green Music Center production of American musical standards.

Norman has received numerous awards and honors, including honorary doctorates from Howard University in 1982, from the Boston Conservatory of Music and the University of the South in 1984, and from Harvard University in 1998. Musical America named her Musician of the Year in 1982. Her recording of Strauss's Four Last Songs won the Gramophone Record of the Year Award in 1984. In 2006, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. A memoir of Norman's life, entitled Stand Up Straight and Sing! was published in 2014. She was also the recipient of the 2015 Wolf Prize in Arts.

Significance

Norman is internationally renowned for her voice's power, subtle nuances, and dramatic expression. Besides opera, she has found success in interpreting German and French art songs, as illustrated by her acclaimed recordings of songs by Johannes Brahms and Henri Duparc. As African-American music was a part of her life since childhood, Norman's diverse repertoire also includes jazz and spirituals.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Hamao, Fusako, and Micah L. Issitt. "Jessye Norman." Great Lives from History: American Women, edited by Mary K. Trigg, Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLHW_0358.

APA 7th

Hamao, F., & Issitt, M. L. (2016). Jessye Norman. In M. K. Trigg (Ed.), Great Lives from History: American Women. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Hamao, Fusako and Issitt, Micah L. "Jessye Norman." Edited by Mary K. Trigg. Great Lives from History: American Women. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2016. Accessed September 17, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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