Jessye Norman - Academy of Achievement

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As a ten-year-old child she was spellbound by a recording of the great contralto Marian Anderson. Inspired by Anderson's recordings and autobiography, she resolved to become a classical singer herself. At age 16 she won a music scholarship to Howard University. In Europe, she was discovered by the Continent's leading conductors and impresarios. A dramatic soprano with a special affinity for the German repertoire, she has won acclaim in the operas of Wagner and Richard Strauss. Equally at home in French and Italian, she has enchanted audiences as Bizet's Carmen and as Mozart's Countess Almaviva. For the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera's centennial season, she made history by singing the roles of both Cassandra and Dido in Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz. In addition to her opera roles, her recitals and recordings have included American spirituals, French chansons and German lieder. From Haydn to Mahler to Schoenberg and Berg, from Satie and Poulenc to Gershwin, Bernstein and Ellington, the breadth of Jessye Norman's artistic range is breathtaking."/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Jessye Norman - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">One of the most distinguished musical artists of our time, Jessye Norman traveled from her home town of Augusta, Georgia to the opera houses and concert halls of the world. As a ten-year-old child she was spellbound by a recording of the great contralto Marian Anderson. Inspired by Anderson's recordings and autobiography, she resolved to become a classical singer herself. At age 16 she won a music scholarship to Howard University. In Europe, she was discovered by the Continent's leading conductors and impresarios.</p> <p class="inputText">A dramatic soprano with a special affinity for the German repertoire, she has won acclaim in the operas of Wagner and Richard Strauss. Equally at home in French and Italian, she has enchanted audiences as Bizet's Carmen and as Mozart's Countess Almaviva. For the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera's centennial season, she made history by singing the roles of both Cassandra and Dido in <i>Les Troyens</i> by Hector Berlioz.</p> <p class="inputText">In addition to her opera roles, her recitals and recordings have included American spirituals, French <i>chansons</i> and German <i>lieder</i>. From Haydn to Mahler to Schoenberg and Berg, from Satie and Poulenc to Gershwin, Bernstein and Ellington, the breadth of Jessye Norman's artistic range is breathtaking.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/norman-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">One of the most distinguished musical artists of our time, Jessye Norman traveled from her home town of Augusta, Georgia to the opera houses and concert halls of the world. As a ten-year-old child she was spellbound by a recording of the great contralto Marian Anderson. Inspired by Anderson's recordings and autobiography, she resolved to become a classical singer herself. At age 16 she won a music scholarship to Howard University. In Europe, she was discovered by the Continent's leading conductors and impresarios.</p> <p class="inputText">A dramatic soprano with a special affinity for the German repertoire, she has won acclaim in the operas of Wagner and Richard Strauss. Equally at home in French and Italian, she has enchanted audiences as Bizet's Carmen and as Mozart's Countess Almaviva. For the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera's centennial season, she made history by singing the roles of both Cassandra and Dido in <i>Les Troyens</i> by Hector Berlioz.</p> <p class="inputText">In addition to her opera roles, her recitals and recordings have included American spirituals, French <i>chansons</i> and German <i>lieder</i>. From Haydn to Mahler to Schoenberg and Berg, from Satie and Poulenc to Gershwin, Bernstein and Ellington, the breadth of Jessye Norman's artistic range is breathtaking.</p>"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="Jessye Norman - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/norman-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190102103115\/http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"WebSite","@id":"#website","url":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190102103115\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/","name":"Academy of Achievement","alternateName":"A museum of living history","potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190102103115\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/search\/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}</script> <script 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<div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Jessye Norman</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Legendary Opera Soprano</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-2922 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-singer"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane fade in active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="banner clearfix"> <div class="banner--single clearfix"> <div class="col-lg-8 col-lg-offset-2"> <div class="banner__image__container"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <img class="lazyload banner__image" data-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/WhatItTakes_norman-256-190x190.jpg" alt=""/> </figure> </a> </div> <div class="banner__text__container"> <h3 class="serif-3 banner__headline"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> Listen to this achiever on <i>What It Takes</i> </a> </h3> <p class="sans-6 banner__text m-b-0"><i>What It Takes</i> is an audio podcast on iTunes produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: music, science and exploration, sports, film, technology, literature, the military and social justice.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">I am just trying to live my life in song.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> September 15, 1945 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p>Jessye Norman was born in Augusta, Georgia. Her father Silas was an insurance salesman, her mother a schoolteacher. Jessye Norman’s parents placed an enormous importance on education. Although the schools of Georgia were racially segregated in the 1950s, the Normans and their neighbors pressed for high standards in their local schools and expected a high level of academic performance from their children. The presence of the University of Georgia medical school in the community had a powerful influence on the Norman children. One brother became a physician, one sister the director of a nursing program. Jessye too thought she might pursue a career in medicine, until her unmistakable talent led her in a different direction.</p> <figure id="attachment_11109" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11109 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-011-norman-AP110927027760.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11109 size-full lazyload" width="2280" height="2941" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-011-norman-AP110927027760.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-011-norman-AP110927027760-295x380.jpg 295w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-011-norman-AP110927027760-589x760.jpg 589w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-011-norman-AP110927027760.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Marian Anderson returns to the Lincoln Memorial in 1952 to sing at memorial services for former Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. It was her first appearance at the memorial since the historic 1939 concert, arranged by Secretary Harold Ickes and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Marian Anderson sing in their Constitution Hall. Marian Anderson’s grace under pressure captured the entire nation. Her recordings enthralled listeners, such as the young Jessye Norman. (Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images)</figcaption></figure><p>Music was another interest of the Norman family. Jessye’s father sang in the church choir; her mother played piano and insisted that Jessye study piano as well. Jessye’s powerful singing voice attracted attention at an early age. By age four she was singing gospel songs at Mount Calvary Baptist Church. Soon she was singing in school assemblies and community functions. Noting her love of singing, her parents gave her a radio of her own, and she spent many Saturday afternoons in her room, listening to the live broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera. As a ten-year-old child, she was spellbound by a recording of the great contralto Marian Anderson. Inspired by Anderson’s recordings and by reading the singer’s autobiography, Norman imagined becoming a classical singer herself.</p> <figure id="attachment_11107" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11107 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-009-norman-AP6111241367.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11107 size-full lazyload" alt="Australian soprano Joan Sutherland rehearses for her Metropolitan opera debut in the title role of Lucia di Lamermoor, 1961. Young Jessye Norman listened to Sutherland's performances at the Met on the radio in her bedroom in Augusta, Georgia. (Copyright Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images)" width="2280" height="2288" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-009-norman-AP6111241367.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-009-norman-AP6111241367-190x190.jpg 190w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-009-norman-AP6111241367-380x380.jpg 380w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-009-norman-AP6111241367-757x760.jpg 757w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-009-norman-AP6111241367.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1961: Australian soprano Joan Sutherland rehearses for her Metropolitan Opera debut in the title role of <em>Lucia di Lammermoor</em>. Jessye Norman listened to Sutherland’s performances on the radio in her bedroom in Augusta, GA.</figcaption></figure><p>While still in high school, she learned of the annual Marian Anderson Music Scholarship Competition. With the aid of her high school classmates, she traveled to Philadelphia, accompanied by her high school choir teacher, to participate in the contest. At age 16, she was the youngest entrant, and although she did not win an award, the judges encouraged her to study seriously. On her trip home, she and her teacher stopped in Washington, D.C., and her teacher arranged an impromptu audition with the music faculty of Howard University. Although she had over a year of high school ahead of her, Jessye Norman was offered a full music scholarship to Howard. Young Jessye set aside her plan for pre-med studies and resolved to pursue a musical career.</p> <figure id="attachment_11104" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11104 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-006-norman-148962724_10.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11104 size-full lazyload" alt="American opera singer Jessye Norman, September 1984. (Photo by David Montgomery/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="2291" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-006-norman-148962724_10.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-006-norman-148962724_10-190x190.jpg 190w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-006-norman-148962724_10-378x380.jpg 378w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-006-norman-148962724_10-756x760.jpg 756w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-006-norman-148962724_10.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">In 1984, the French government bestowed upon Jessey Norman the title Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris named an orchid for her. (David Montgomery/Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>Norman received a thorough grounding in music at Howard; after graduation in 1967, she continued her studies at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, and at the University of Michigan, where she earned a master’s degree, consolidating her command of music theory and vocal technique, as well as learning to sing in the languages of the classical repertoire, Italian, French and German.</p> <p>For generations, American classical singers have traveled to Europe to pursue their art. The numerous opera houses of Germany and Austria have long provided opportunities for young singers that the less developed American opera scene has not. Two American opera enthusiasts, Patricia and J. Ralph Corbett, invited the directors of the major European opera houses to New York to hear their country’s most promising young singers. At age 23, Jessye Norman made the trip and sang an aria from Richard Wagner’s <em>Tannhäser</em>. The director of Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, Egon Seefehlner, was so impressed, he invited Norman to Berlin to sing the entire role. Norman quickly learned the rest of the role and made sure that her spoken German would serve her as well offstage as her singing diction onstage.</p> <figure id="attachment_48327" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48327 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-GettyImages-500932813.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48327 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="2884" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-GettyImages-500932813.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-GettyImages-500932813-300x380.jpg 300w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-GettyImages-500932813-601x760.jpg 601w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-GettyImages-500932813.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1987: American opera singer Jessye Norman in New York City. In 1987, Norman joined the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Herbert von Karajan in possibly the greatest rendition of the “Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde by Wagner in a historical concert (filmed and recorded audio by Deutsche Grammophon) at the Salzburg Festival. The concert was then repeated some weeks later in Berlin, with Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. (Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>On arriving in Germany in 1969, she won first place in the competition sponsored by the ARD (Allgemeine Rundfunk Deutschland – German Broadcast Corporation), the country’s largest national music competition. Shortly thereafter, she made her professional operatic debut as Elisabeth in <em>Tannhäser</em> at the Deutsche Oper. Her first aria was so well received that Dr. Seefehlner offered her a three-year contract before the performance was even over. In this quintessentially German role, the young African American singer was acclaimed as the greatest voice since Germany’s beloved Lotte Lehmann. Her Italian debut followed within a year.</p> <p>Opera singers, particularly in Germany, are traditionally divided into narrowly defined vocal categories. The higher female voices are classified as coloratura, lyric and dramatic sopranos, and then divided into even narrower subcategories. The category or <em>fach</em> a singer is assigned to ordinarily determines what roles she will be offered. From the beginning, Norman’s warm, powerful sound seemed suited to the dramatic soprano repertoire, but the wide range of her voice defied classification. When asked to define her own voice, she famously replied, “Pigeonholes are only comfortable for pigeons.”</p> <figure id="attachment_48303" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48303 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-July-9-1989-GettyImages-542622694.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48303 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1568" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-July-9-1989-GettyImages-542622694.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-July-9-1989-GettyImages-542622694-380x261.jpg 380w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-July-9-1989-GettyImages-542622694-760x523.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-July-9-1989-GettyImages-542622694.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Soprano Jessye Norman stands at the Hotel Crillon in Paris. A gigantic and bizarre two-hour “opera-ballet” with a cast of 8,000 people, 100 sheep, and assorted oddities will crown celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution on July 14. In the show’s climax, American opera singer Jessye Norman will emerge from a pyramid in the Place de la Concorde to sing “La Marseillaise” while a wall of water divides, Hollywood-style, to let the sheep and marchers through. French Culture Minister Jack Lang said yesterday the surreal show would top two days of festivities marking Bastille Day when a Paris mob stormed the Bastille prison in 1789. (Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p>Although she had made her initial impression in the dramatic role of Elisabeth, she was soon singing the Countess in Mozart’s <em>Marriage of Figaro</em>, a role often assigned to lyric sopranos. She was yet to appear in opera outside of Europe, but her 1971 recording of this role brought her to the attention of music lovers around the world.</p> <p>In 1972, Norman made her first appearance at Milan’s fabled La Scala, in the title role of Verdi’s <em>Aïda</em>. At London’s Covent Garden, she sang Cassandra in <em>Les Troyens</em> by Hector Berlioz. Norman returned to America and made a recital tour of the country. In 1973, she made her New York debut in recital at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.</p> <figure id="attachment_11105" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11105 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-007-norman-AP890715037.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11105 lazyload" alt="American opera singer Jessye Norman sings "La Marseillaise," the French national anthem, to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution in Paris, France in 1989. Norman wears the French national colors, in a gown created by French designer Azzedine Alaia. (AP Images/Michel Lipchitz)" width="2280" height="1621" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-007-norman-AP890715037.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-007-norman-AP890715037-380x270.jpg 380w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-007-norman-AP890715037-760x540.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-007-norman-AP890715037.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1989: Jessye Norman sings <em>La Marseillaise</em>, the French national anthem, to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution in Paris. Norman wears the French national colors, in a gown designed by Azzedine Alaia. (© AP Images)</figcaption></figure> <p>While critics struggled to describe her voice, Norman knew which roles were right for her and which were not. Within a few years of her debut, she felt that Dr. Seefehlner and the Berlin opera management were pushing her into roles her voice was not ready for. At best, opera singers’ voices mature in their 30s and 40s; singers who sing too much in their 20s may find their vocal equipment worn out before they reach their full potential. Norman was determined to protect her instrument, and refused to take on the heavier dramatic roles until she felt ready. In 1975, she moved to London, and concentrated on concert and recital appearances, including performances in concert works such as Mendelssohn’s <em>Elijah</em>. Throughout the 1970s, she toured Europe extensively, giving recital of German <em>lieder</em> and French <em>chansons</em> as well as works by contemporary American composers. She made major concert tours of the United States in 1976 and ’77, but stayed away from the opera stage until the end of the decade.</p> <figure id="attachment_11103" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11103 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-005-norman-111075974_10.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11103 size-full lazyload" alt="Jessye Norman visits Leningrad, Russia to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Tchaikovsky. (Photo by Helene Bamberger/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1494" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-005-norman-111075974_10.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-005-norman-111075974_10-380x249.jpg 380w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-005-norman-111075974_10-760x498.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-005-norman-111075974_10.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1990: Jessye Norman visits Leningrad, Russia to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Tchaikovsky. (Getty)</figcaption></figure><p>In the first years of her career, her stature and noble bearing had made her a natural in the princess roles of Wagner and Verdi opera, but a hectic schedule had made it difficult to care for her own physical well-being. When she finally returned to the opera stage in 1980, she looked and sounded better than ever and was ready for the most demanding challenges. In 1980 she played the title role in <em>Ariadne auf Naxos</em> by Richard Strauss at the Hamburg State Opera, a role that remains forever associated with her powerful interpretation. In the United States, she electrified audiences with her performances in the leading female roles of Stravinsky’s <em>Oedipus rex</em> and Purcell’s <em>Dido and Aeneas</em> at the Philadelphia Opera. These roles, spanning the range from 20th-century modernism to 17th century Baroque, were a compelling demonstration of Norman’s musicianship and stylistic versatility.</p> <figure id="attachment_11100" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11100 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-002-norman-50426906_10.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11100 size-full lazyload" alt="Jessye Norman performs at a White House State Dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. (Photo by Diana Walker//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1515" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-002-norman-50426906_10.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-002-norman-50426906_10-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-002-norman-50426906_10-760x505.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-002-norman-50426906_10.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">May 1991: Jessye Norman performs in the East Room after White House State Dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth II.</figcaption></figure><p>In 1983, the Metropolitan Opera celebrated its 100th anniversary, and Jessye Norman made her long-awaited Met debut in <em>Les Troyens</em>. In keeping with the historic occasion, Norman performed a historic feat, singing the roles of both Cassandra and Dido in the same evening.</p> <p>By this time, Norman was recognized as one of the foremost singers in the world, and was invited to sing at state occasions on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1985, she sang the Shaker song “Simple Gifts” at the second inauguration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. A few years later, she performed at the 60th birthday celebration for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. Norman’s concert performances in the 1980s also made news. In appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic in the United States and Europe, she stunned audiences with her powerful interpretations of the Liebestod from Wagner’s <em>Tristan und Isolde</em> and the “Four Last Songs” of Richard Strauss. Her recordings of these works are treasured by collectors. Television brought Norman’s artistry to an even larger audience with the broadcast of her 1987 Christmas special, recorded in her hometown of Augusta.</p> <figure id="attachment_11110" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11110 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-012-norman-ZIB70001181.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11110 size-full lazyload" alt="Jessye Norman joins her fellow 1997 Kennedy Center Honorees: singer Bob Dylan, actress Lauren Bacall, dancer Edward Villella and actor Charlton Heston. (© Matthew Mendelsohn/CORBIS)" width="2280" height="1507" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-012-norman-ZIB70001181.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-012-norman-ZIB70001181-380x251.jpg 380w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-012-norman-ZIB70001181-760x502.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-012-norman-ZIB70001181.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Jessye Norman joins her fellow 1997 Kennedy Center Honorees at the U.S. State Department for a celebration of their achievements: singer Bob Dylan, actress Lauren Bacall, dancer Edward Villella and actor Charlton Heston.</figcaption></figure><p>On the opera stage Norman undertook a number of challenging modern works, including a pair of one-woman operas in which she was the sole performer onstage, <em>La voix humaine</em> by Francis Poulenc and <em>Erwartung</em> by Arnold Schoenberg. She first sang <em>La voix humaine</em> in a concert performance in 1988. The following year she sang <em>Erwartung</em> at the Met in a double bill with Bela Bartók’s <em>Bluebeard’s Castle</em>. Her performance of <em>Erwartung</em> and <em>Bluebeard’s Castle</em> was recorded and broadcast on national television. Her appearance with the New York Philharmonic in the opening concert of its 148th season was broadcast live on public television.</p> <p>At the decade’s close, Norman had attained international stature as a uniquely beloved ambassadress of song. In 1989, she was chosen by President Mitterand of France to sing the national anthem, “<em>La Marseillaise</em>,” in the bicentennial celebration of the French Revolution at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The following year, the Secretary General of the United Nations named her an Honorary Ambassador to the United Nations, and she traveled to Leningrad to participate in the celebration of Tchaikovsky’s 150th birthday. In 1991 she sang at the celebration of the 700th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation, and recorded a live concert at Notre Dame in Paris.</p> <p>In the 1990s, her performances on the opera stage found her exploring widely diverse repertoire, and exploring new territory geographically as well as artistically. She assumed the title roles of Glück’s <em>Alceste</em> in Chicago, and sang the role of Jocasta in Stravinsky’s <em>Oedipus rex</em> in Japan in a production directed by Julie Taymor. Having sung roles in German, French, Italian and Latin, she added Czech to her arsenal of languages with the 1996 Met premiere of <em>The Makropoulos Case</em> by Leos Janacek.</p> <figure id="attachment_11111" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11111 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-013-norman-42-27854233.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11111 lazyload" alt="Jessye Norman opens the 99th annual gala of the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Hall in 2010. (© Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis)" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-013-norman-42-27854233.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-013-norman-42-27854233-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-013-norman-42-27854233-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-013-norman-42-27854233.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Jessye Norman opens the 99th annual gala of the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Hall in 2010. (Corbis Photo)</figcaption></figure><p>In 1997 Norman sang at the second inaugural ceremony of President Bill Clinton. She was also among the year’s recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, the youngest recipient in the 20-year history of the Honors. This period also saw her asserting her identity as a uniquely American singer. She performed Duke Ellington’s <em>Sacred Concerts</em> at Carnegie Hall, accompanied by a jazz band and the Alvin Ailey Repertory Dance Ensemble. She later brought the Ellington program to London and Vienna. She often programs Ellington’s music alongside songs by George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein, comparing and contrasting these three quintessentially American 20th century composers.</p> <p>Throughout her career, she has constantly broadened her repertoire, mixing contemporary music with the classics in her concerts and recitals. In her 2000 album, <em>I Was Born in Love With You</em>, she sang the songs of the contemporary French composer Michel Legrand, accompanied by the composer at the piano, and jazz stars Ron Carter and Grady Tate on bass and drums. In 2001 she gave a typically expansive overview of her extensive repertoire in a three-part concert series at Carnegie Hall with Met conductor James Levine as her accompanist.</p> <figure id="attachment_11108" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11108 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-010-norman-AP10070411656.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11108 size-full lazyload" alt="Opera singer Jessye Norman takes a jazz turn at the 2010 International Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland. (AP Images/Keystone/Dominic Favre)" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-010-norman-AP10070411656.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-010-norman-AP10070411656-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-010-norman-AP10070411656-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-010-norman-AP10070411656.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Opera singer Jessye Norman takes a jazz turn at the 2010 International Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland.</figcaption></figure> <p>Norman showed yet another side of her talent in 2009, when she curated the Honor! Festival, celebrating the achievements of African American artists through concerts, performances and exhibitions at venues throughout New York City, including Carnegie Hall, the Apollo Theater and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.</p> <p>Jessye Norman has used her great success to give back to the community, particularly her hometown of Augusta, Georgia, and in New York City. In 2003 the Jessye Norman School of the Arts opened in Augusta, a free after-school program that gives talented middle school students the opportunity to study music, drama, dance and art. She serves on the boards of Carnegie Hall and the New York Public Library, as well as the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the Lupus Foundation, and the Partnership for the Homeless. She is a proud lifetime member of the Girl Scouts of America.</p> <figure id="attachment_11102" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11102 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-004-norman-97098682_10.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11102 size-full lazyload" alt="President Barack Obama presents Jessye Norman with the National Medal of the Arts during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, 2010. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1503" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-004-norman-97098682_10.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-004-norman-97098682_10-380x251.jpg 380w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-004-norman-97098682_10-760x501.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-004-norman-97098682_10.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">President Barack Obama presents Jessye Norman with the National Medal of the Arts during an awards ceremony in the East Room of the White House in 2010. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski and Bloomberg, via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p>Since her first work with the Alvin Ailey dancers in 1997, she has pursued increasingly adventurous collaborations with theater directors, filmmakers and modern choreographers, including: her 1999 project with Bill T. Jones, <em>How! Do! We! Do!</em>; a 2006 Ellington program with Trey McIntyre; a double bill of <em>Erwartung</em> and <em>La voix humaine</em> designed by Austrian multimedia artist Andre Heller; a theatrical interpretation of Schubert’s <em>Winterreise</em> song cycle, staged by director Robert Wilson; and a documentary film, <em>Jessye Norman</em>, directed by Heller and Othmar Schmiderer.</p> <figure id="attachment_11115" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11115 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-017-norman-Oct-18-image-6.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11115 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="3420" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-017-norman-Oct-18-image-6.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-017-norman-Oct-18-image-6-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-017-norman-Oct-18-image-6-507x760.jpg 507w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-017-norman-Oct-18-image-6.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Three of America’s great classical singers, Denyce Graves, Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle, after performing at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., 2012. The concert and dinner honored Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore, who received Ford’s Theatre’s Lincoln Medal. The event was hosted by Wayne and Catherine Reynolds.</figcaption></figure><p>To date, she has recorded over 75 CDs. In addition to highest honors from the recording associations of France, Britain, Germany and Spain, in 1996, she became the fourth classical singer to receive the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement, joining the company of Enrico Caruso and the heroines of her youth, Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price. In 2010, she received the National Medal of the Arts from President Barack Obama.</p> <p>Today, Jessye Norman makes her home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. Although she no longer performs ensemble opera, she continues to perform as a soloist, in innovative theatrical works and in recital, as well as in concert with the world’s leading orchestras.</p></body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 1992 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.singer">Singer</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> September 15, 1945 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">One of the most distinguished musical artists of our time, Jessye Norman traveled from her home town of Augusta, Georgia to the opera houses and concert halls of the world. As a ten-year-old child she was spellbound by a recording of the great contralto Marian Anderson. Inspired by Anderson’s recordings and autobiography, she resolved to become a classical singer herself. At age 16 she won a music scholarship to Howard University. In Europe, she was discovered by the Continent’s leading conductors and impresarios.</p> <p class="inputText">A dramatic soprano with a special affinity for the German repertoire, she has won acclaim in the operas of Wagner and Richard Strauss. Equally at home in French and Italian, she has enchanted audiences as Bizet’s Carmen and as Mozart’s Countess Almaviva. For the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s centennial season, she made history by singing the roles of both Cassandra and Dido in <i>Les Troyens</i> by Hector Berlioz.</p> <p class="inputText">In addition to her opera roles, her recitals and recordings have included American spirituals, French <i>chansons</i> and German <i>lieder</i>. From Haydn to Mahler to Schoenberg and Berg, from Satie and Poulenc to Gershwin, Bernstein and Ellington, the breadth of Jessye Norman’s artistic range is breathtaking.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/0oPhl_JM8yw?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=4406&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-HDCAM-1Aof3-Orig.00_48_29_26.Still004-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-HDCAM-1Aof3-Orig.00_48_29_26.Still004-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement</h2> <div class="sans-2">Washington, D.C.</div> <div class="sans-2">July 22, 2012</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>You achieved great success at such an early age. <span class="s1">Have you ever had any doubts about your ability?</span></strong></p> <p>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.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/lRNIeXF70mc?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-MasterEdit.00_08_17_06.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-MasterEdit.00_08_17_06.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/courage/">Courage</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>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.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Were you afraid you might be making a mistake?</b></span></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/Tb2fVzbceys?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-MasterEdit.00_13_46_06.Still011-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-MasterEdit.00_13_46_06.Still011-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/courage/">Courage</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">Jessye Norman: I decided that I had to save myself by leaving the opera house.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It isn’t as though I had, you know, sort of sheaves and sheaves of work.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I made this decision because I was trying to save myself.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I have always sung more solo recitals with piano than opera, but it isn’t as though I had recitals lined up all over the world.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I had two or three things that I knew that were coming up, but I didn’t have a lot after that. So at that point in my very young life, I wasn’t sure whether or not I was going to be able to continue, because it wasn’t certain that I would have enough work as a solo performer to support myself. So there were probably about two months before I actually told my parents what I’d done. When I called them, and my mother was on one extension and my father was on the other one, which was in the kitchen, there was stunned silence, and my father said, “Well sister, how is it going since you’ve left the opera house in Berlin?”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I said, “Well actually, I have two recitals in this place, and another recital in that place, and I think I’m going to be all right.” And at some point, Mother said, “Do you need to come home?”</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_11114" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11114 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-016-norman-Oct-18-image-3.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11114 size-full lazyload" alt="Three of America's great classical singers, Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman and Denyce Graves, after performing at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., 2012." width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-016-norman-Oct-18-image-3.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-016-norman-Oct-18-image-3-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-016-norman-Oct-18-image-3-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-016-norman-Oct-18-image-3.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Three of America’s great classical singers: Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman and Denyce Graves, after performing at Ford’s Theatre during a tribute to Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore, in Washington, D.C., 2012.</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What did you say?</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1">Jessye Norman: I said, “No, I think I’m going to be all right.”</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>How did you come to be offered this opportunity in the first place?</b></span></p> <p class="p3"><span class="s2">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.</span></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/sxDeCyZZPSk?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=97&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-MasterEdit.00_23_29_09.Still012-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-MasterEdit.00_23_29_09.Still012-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>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 <i>Tannhäuser</i>, 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.”</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p class="p1">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.”</p> <p class="p2"><b>Were you in graduate school when you went to New York and did this?</b></p> <p class="p1">Jessye Norman: Yes, I was in graduate school at the University of Michigan.</p> <p class="p2"><b>You left there and moved to Germany and the rest is history.</b></p> <p class="p1">Jessye Norman: Well yes, we’re still trying to make it.</p> <p class="p1"><b>What did it feel like that first time, singing with a full orchestra on the stage of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin?</b></p> <p class="p2">Jessye Norman: By this time I had sung with an orchestra. I had sung with the University of Michigan Orchestra.</p> <figure id="attachment_11112" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11112 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-014-norman-0000247762-005.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11112 lazyload" alt="Jessye Norman at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, July 1989. Norman was chosen by the President of France to perform the national anthem, "La Marseillaise," during the bicentennial celebration of the French Revolution. (© Julio Donoso/Sygma/Corbis)" width="2280" height="1517" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-014-norman-0000247762-005.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-014-norman-0000247762-005-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-014-norman-0000247762-005-760x506.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-014-norman-0000247762-005.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Jessye Norman at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, July 1989. Norman was chosen by the President of France to perform the national anthem, <em>La Marseillaise</em>, during the bicentennial celebration of the French Revolution. (Corbis Photo)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><b>Was there a standing ovation at the end?</b></p> <p class="p2">Jessye Norman: There was a standing ovation at the end of the opera, I think because everybody was just so surprised. One has to understand … think about this. Berlin, December of 1969, just a little bit before Christmas, the Berlin opera house, an African American singing a quintessential German character in a Wagnerian opera in a German opera house. It’s completely crazy when you think about it, but that’s what happened to me.</p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>After your successful debut in Berlin, how did you come to realize you were being offered roles you were not ready for?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/G8d7Isr6hkw?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=110&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-MasterEdit.00_11_51_20.Still009-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-MasterEdit.00_11_51_20.Still009-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>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.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><b>How did you learn to speak German?</b></p> <p class="p1">Jessye Norman: Determination. Five hours a day for six months.</p> <p class="p2"><b>And then Italian, and then all the other languages that you’ve mastered.</b></p> <p class="p1">Jessye Norman: Yes, and Spanish, yes. Rabbi Freidlander works with me every time I’ve got to sing in Hebrew. I don’t pretend to speak Hebrew. But otherwise I don’t sing in languages that I don’t speak.</p> <p class="p2"><b>Why?</b></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102103115if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/pVheieSuW6A?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-MasterEdit.00_07_29_10.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Norman-Jessye-2012-MasterEdit.00_07_29_10.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">Jessye Norman: I want to be able to express, I want to be able to communicate, and I want to be able to understand what it is I’m doing, and I want the people whose language it is to understand what I’m doing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And to help me with that, I need to listen to people speaking their own language, to listen to the difference in nuance which, of course, is just… I just love languages, and I love learning, and I love listening.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I love being able to listen to Italian and to be able to tell that that person comes from North Italy, and that person is from Southern Italy, and that person is from Napoli.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Only people from Napoli speak Italian like that, and I enjoy that sort of thing.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>How did you first discover your voice, and find out you could become a singer?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: My parents told me that I started singing at the same time that I started speaking. So I have absolutely no memory of not singing, and it was — and remains, thank goodness! — a very natural thing for me to do, because I’ve always done it. I was in the children’s choir at the church, and the choir at the school in first grade, and all the rest of it. And it wasn’t that I had such an interesting voice, it was just a very loud voice, and so for a five-year-old or a six-year-old, I could always sing on my own and be heard, you see, so that was the interesting part of that time. I hope that things have changed over time.</p> <p><strong>When did you first sing in public?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: The first time I recall singing in public I was in the second grade. I’m sure that I sang in church before that, but I don’t really have a memory of that. But I remember being in second grade and the school — it was a huge school in the segregated South, at least 1,200 kids in school from first grade to eighth grade at the time — and every Friday the school would all come together in the auditorium, when the principal would tell you whether you’ve been good children or bad children and all the things you needed to do to be really good children. And so it was the responsibility of a class, out of the second grade or the third grade or the fourth grade, to present a kind of program on each of the Fridays. And it was now time for the second grade students to do this, and my teacher at the time said, “Well then, you should sing, Norman.” I was always called by my last name because there were too many of us to remember our first names. And so she said, “You can sing, Norman, because you sing so loudly we won’t have to sort of lower the microphone from the principal when you’re singing on stage.” I took it to be a compliment. Absolutely I took it to be a compliment.</p> <p><strong>How old were you?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I was seven. Second grade.</p> <p><strong>Is there a book that inspired you as a child?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I think when I was about five, I read a book that still remains one of my favorites, and I give it to all of the little children in my family, and it’s <em>Ferdinand the Bull</em>. I love <em>Ferdinand the Bull</em> because Ferdinand didn’t look like the rest of the animals and therefore had to think highly of himself to sort of get on in life. I still think of that book, and every time I mention it somebody sends me another copy of <em>Ferdinand the Bull</em>. I give them away. One can only keep so many copies of the same children’s book, but that was a book that inspired me as a very young child. I know it isn’t probably the answer that one is expecting to say, “Oh no, it was the first time I read <em>Much Ado About Nothing</em> of Shakespeare,” or something. No, it was <em>Ferdinand the Bull</em>.</p> <p><strong>What was the role of music in your house when you were growing up?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: There was music all the time. The boys in my family played instruments in the bands at schools, because my father was the president of the PTA and my mother was the secretary of the PTA. Parents in those days would not have allowed the kind of things that are happening with the schools’ curriculum these days, all over the country and all over the world, that the arts are simply dropping out of the curriculum. They wouldn’t have allowed it. They knew how much being a member of the chorus — or a member of the movement group, or a member of the poetry society, or a member of the band — they realized how much this influenced everything else in our lives, and that it was a part of education that really is just too important to be left aside. So music was in my house all the time. My mother played piano, and one of the things that I talk about all the time is at Christmastime, we do a version — if you can imagine it — of <em>The Messiah</em>‘s “Hallelujah Chorus.” Now with my mother playing the piano, and I’m singing all of the parts of the chorus, and one of my brothers is playing the tuba, somebody else is playing the trumpet, and somebody else is playing the trombone, we would simply look at the music and choose a line of it to play. And there we were, sort of doing this thing that really calls for a chorus and an orchestra, not five people in the hallway on the upright piano. I always say, if we hadn’t known where Handel was buried at the time, (we would have known) from the Norman rendition of “Hallelujah Chorus,” because he was certainly spinning in his grave!</p> <p><strong>Was this interest in music unique to your family?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: There were a lot of musical children around. I mean there were a lot of us that studied piano. I studied piano from the time I was very young, and all of us were sent out to piano whether you wanted to or not. I mean, the boys in my family — my three brothers — had to study piano along with my sister and myself, and cousins and everybody at school went to study piano lessons, and to participate in various sort of musical things at the churches and schools. It was a very normal thing to have music in the house, to come in on a Sunday afternoon — which was one of the great things of growing up — to come in on a Sunday afternoon from church, and there was Leonard Bernstein doing the Young People’s Concerts on television. It was one of the few things that we were allowed to watch in television, and it was on Sunday in the afternoon, and it was incredible. It was almost as good as going to a concert, because he spoke directly into the camera. He told you everything you needed to know about the music and then the music was played. It was astounding, really wonderful.</p> <p><strong>You were lucky to have parents who understood the power of music and the arts.</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Yes, they understood that.</p> <p><strong>Many Americans do not hear operatic music when they’re growing up. You started listening to opera at an early age. How did that come about?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I was given my very own radio. I know that most kids sort of listening to this right now would just burst out laughing, but it was the greatest thing in the world. I was given my very own radio in my very own bedroom, which meant I could listen to anything that I wanted to. I didn’t have to invite my brothers. I could close the door, and if I wanted to listen to <em>Gunsmoke</em> or to Elvis Presley or to the Metropolitan Opera on Saturdays, I could do that. And I would listen to the Metropolitan Opera because they had the most wonderful announcer. His name was Milton Cross, and Milton Cross would tell you everything you needed to know about the opera. Of course I didn’t understand Italian or French or German or any of these things, but I didn’t need to, because Milton Cross told you everything you needed to know. He told you what Joan Sutherland was wearing, that she was very tall, that she was wearing a very beautiful blond wig and that her costume for <em>Lucia di Lammermoor</em> was this beautiful teal blue color. So I could see all of this in my mind, and however long the opera lasted on a Saturday afternoon, that’s how long it took me to clean my room, which was my job on the Saturday. So if it was a long opera, it went on for a bit, my cleaning.</p> <p><strong>Did you share your excitement about the opera with your friends? Were they interested?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I had the luck of having a teacher, several teachers already in the fourth grade, a Mrs. Printup, and then in the fifth grade a Mrs. Hughes, in the sixth grade — by the time I’m 11 — a Mrs. Williams, and they knew that I was interested in this and they also knew that my classmates were not, so on a Monday, if I had listened to the opera that Saturday, I would be asked by my various teachers, “Now would you like to tell us what it was you heard on the radio on Saturday?” I was happy to. The kids were bored to tears. You can just imagine it, you know, sort of 10-year-old boys sort of sitting there listening to some girl go on about Leontyne Price singing <em>Aïda</em>. I mean really, what is <em>Aïda</em> anyway? And I would tell the story, because I’d make notes when Milton Cross was telling us what was going on, so that I would be prepared. So I had my little sort of shtick every Monday morning, you know, during the course of the year when the opera was on, that I might be called upon to talk about the opera. So I arrived with my notes and bored the class to absolute tears for these 15 minutes. One of the operas — a wonderful septet from an opera of Donizetti, the one that I mentioned earlier, <em>Lucia di Lammermoor</em>, it has such a beautiful, beautiful ensemble, and I memorized the tune because it was so pretty for my ears, and I had remembered it by the time Monday turned around, and I could talk about it to the class, and that was the one time that I think the boys in the class actually listened to what I was saying.</p> <p><strong>Can you hum it? What is it?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: (Humming). I mean just the most beautiful tune imaginable.</p> <p><strong>What experience or event in your life inspired you the most?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Oh gosh. That would be very difficult to say. I would have to choose being inspired by just hearing my grandmother sing her way through the entire day. She had a song for every time of day. In the morning there was a kind of quick song, a spiritual that would be rather fast. And then later in the day, when she was perhaps more contemplative, or maybe just exhausted from the day… I remember being taken by that. She seemed to have her own kind of soundtrack that accompanied her throughout the day. I didn’t think of it in those terms as a young child, but now, in reflection, I think about her having her own soundtrack.</p> <p>I think about being nine or ten years old, and the next door neighbor saying she had some 78s that someone had given her, and she knew I was interested in that kind of music, and would I sort of like to listen to something. And I said, “Yes, of course I would.” We didn’t have a stereo player at the house — at our house — that played 78s, but she had one at her house that played 78s, so she gave me this stack of recordings and kind of left the room for me to have my own fun. And I found a recording of Marian Anderson’s — whose name I’d already heard — and she was singing the Brahms Alto Rhapsody. I was listening to that on that record player, as one referred to them in those days, and even though I had no idea of the meaning of the words, they sounded important to me, and the music sounded important to me, and I listened to it over and over again. And on the occasion at Carnegie Hall, many, many years later when we were having a memoriam — as by this time Marian Anderson had passed, this was in 1997 — and when Robert Shaw said to me, “Let’s do the Alto Rhapsody,” I said, “Well, I might not get through it, because I might cry all the way through it because this is a very meaningful piece to me.” But it was thrilling on that occasion in her memory to sing the first thing I’d ever heard her sing.</p> <p><strong>When you were 16, you entered an important music scholarship competition. Where did you go to participate and what was it like?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: When I entered the competition — this is, of course, on paper, I was 15, but knew that I would be the required age of 16 by the time the contest would occur. This was an idea of my choir director from middle school, and so she told me about this and said, “There’s something called the Marian Anderson Competition in Philadelphia, and one can enter from age 16.” What I didn’t understand at the time is that it went from age 16 to age 30, so there would be people in this contest that had a great deal more experience than this 15-year-old from Augusta, Georgia. But anyway, along we went, and there’s a marvelous story that goes with that as well, because my school principal decided that the school should participate in my going to Philadelphia. So on one particular day — and this is amazing when I think about it — he said that all of the children in this big school should — instead of spending their money for lunch — that they should give their money to me so that I would have extra money to go to Philadelphia, and the Board of Education paid for their lunch that day, so that there would be the act of their participating in my going to Philadelphia. Is that a wonderful story?</p> <p><strong>I wonder if those kids remember that when they see where you went in life.</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Oh yes. I still am in contact with a great number of kids that I knew at that time. I went to Philadelphia, and I didn’t win the contest, of course. I mean I was probably the youngest person that ever showed up, but I recall so well that the sister of Marian Anderson came to me. She said, “Now you are very young, but I want you to come back and sing for us once you’ve actually studied singing, because we’re going to keep an eye on you.” And as far as I was concerned, I had won everything! Marian Anderson’s sister actually spoke to me!</p> <p>On the way back from Philadelphia, because my teacher who was accompanying me — Rosa Sanders, my high school music teacher was accompanying me — we stopped in Washington, because we both had relatives here. We were sort of visiting near the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial and all of that, and in the middle of the day she said, “Why don’t we find out if anybody at Howard University is there and will listen to you sing?” I said, “Well, that sounds like fun.” You know, at that time you don’t care that you’re tired and sort of perspiring from sightseeing all day long. It never occurs to you that you can’t sing. And so she knew one of the professors at Howard because he had been a professor at Paine College in Augusta when she had been a student, and that’s where she’d gone to school. So we just called this person, Dean Fax was his name, Mark Fax. And by now he was on faculty at the College of Fine Arts at Howard and so we called and he said, “Well why not? There’s a class this afternoon that’s a master’s degree class in vocal anatomy, so you can sing for that class.” I said, “Why not? That’s fine.” So along we went, and sang for that class, interrupted their studies and just sort of knocked on the door. The professor at the time was told that I was there, and so she welcomed us into the class, where there was a small piano. I sang a few songs, and that professor happened to be Carolyn Grant, who had been professor of voice at Howard University for about 42 years at the time. She accompanied me and my teacher out of the room once we finished our little performance, and she said, “How old are you?” And so I said, “I’m 16. I’ve just turned 16. I’m all grown up!” So she said, “Well, where are you in high school?” I said, “I’ve got another year.” She said, “Well I suppose you’d have to finish high school before you could come to school here,” and I said, “Come to school here?” At that moment, she went down to the dean of the college and said, “I want to teach this child. Make sure that she comes to Howard University.” That’s how I happened to have a scholarship to Howard University. I know, it’s all fairy tales, isn’t it?</p> <p><strong>Did you know you would become a professional singer?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I understood about singing and music, of course, as I said, from a very early age, but I didn’t understand about getting paid for singing, because as a child, of course, you get something to drink and two butter cookies as a “thank you” for coming to whatever it is and singing. That was even more than one expected, you know? You expected to have somebody shake your hand and say thank you and that was the kind of end of it. So the whole idea of becoming one of these people singing on the radio from the Metropolitan Opera on a Saturday, that was very far from my mind, because I had no idea as to how one would do that. But I did understand my other passion — which remains a passion of mine — which is medicine. It happens that the University of Georgia Medical School is in Augusta, Georgia, where I was born. So I saw people in white coats all the time, going back and forth. I understood about going to university and then going to medical school and then getting a job. So up until age 17 — which by this time I had a scholarship to come to Howard University to study in the College of Fine Arts — I was still making sure, as a student in high school, that I had the credits that I would need in order to go to liberal arts at Howard University and to prepare to go to pre-med.</p> <p><strong>So you were thinking of becoming a doctor?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Absolutely, very much so.</p> <p><strong>Did your parents know that?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Oh yes, absolutely.</p> <p><strong>Did they push you in that direction?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I tell the story all the time about my mother coming through my bedroom, sometime in August of 19-ought… when I was getting ready to go to university and you know how it is if you’re going off to university or something the first time or going off to camp, you start packing long before you’re supposed to go. You think you’ve got so many things and such a lot of things to organize that you start very early. And this was the first time I’d had a locker, so I was very interesting in getting myself organized. This was weeks before I needed to show up in Washington, and my mother, who had a very special way of walking, sort of came through my bedroom. She said “Oh, darling. I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but you do have a full scholarship to study <em>music</em> at Howard University. But make up your own mind.”</p> <p><strong>So she was really interested in your following a musical career.</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Yes. Absolutely.</p> <p><strong>At that time, so many people were pushing our kids to get into the sciences.</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Yes, and to have a sure way of earning a living. I was just very lucky, and we talk about this a great deal with my siblings, that our parents were so supportive without sort of being on our necks. How did they do that? All of my siblings have children and are raising wonderful, wonderful, interesting children that are involved in their professional lives, but also in their communities. They try very much to emulate what we learned at home, and that was to be there, but not pushing.</p> <p><strong>Did any of your siblings go into music as well?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: No, they went into medicine. They saw those white coats too, but they participate very much in music. My older brother Silas, who’s an internist — and actually the Dean of Admissions at Wayne State University, the medical college there — and a Professor of Internal Medicine, he sings in a choir. It’s a professional choir. They sing with the Detroit Symphony and go on tour, so he’s very much involved in music. My sister happens to have just come back from London — I was working in Europe as well — because she sings in Wynton Marsalis’s choir. She’s a nursing director, but she still sings. It’s wonderful.</p> <p><strong>Carolyn Grant of Howard University was eager to teach you. What do you think she heard in your voice, or saw in you as a person?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I think that she saw great joy in the actual act of singing, and that even though I was walking into a classroom of people — and it was a small classroom. It wasn’t a big auditorium. People were sitting all around me. And that I was comfortable in that situation, because that’s the way you sing at church. I mean if you were standing in church singing, there’s somebody sitting in the front row, there’s somebody sitting on the side. There are the deacons sitting to your right, so it’s not like you’re on a platform performing. So I think that she saw a certain degree of enthusiasm, and a certain degree of happiness, just being allowed to do it. I think that that sort of caught her eye and her ear, which was, of course, a glorious thing for me, to be able to work with someone, not having studied anything about voice before.</p> <p>How my parents understood that that would not have been a good idea is something about which I revel and celebrate every day of my life. Because, you see…</p> <p>It could be very easy to ruin a young voice by having training in singing too soon, particularly for women. Those muscles on the middle of our bodies that actually support singing are still very much developing when we are teenagers. And if we go to those classes, which, of course, are proliferating all over the world now, because kids think if they can just sing on television and be heard by the right person they’ll have a record deal, as it were, sort of overnight. That isn’t the way life works. Not real life. That’s the way life works on television. It really is so important not to try to use those muscles before they are fully developed, because if you do that, the tendency is to use muscles in the neck, and muscles that are not there for that. Those muscles are there for chewing, absolutely. And I’m sure that you have noticed, as well, that one can see rather young singers that participate and the jaw shakes. That’s because the emphasis is being put on the wrong muscles, and they probably started doing it much too early, because these muscles were not developed so the body uses whatever there is. The thing that I say to young singers, to try to frighten them into not sort of taking themselves too seriously before the body is really ready for it, is that these vocal chords are unforgiving. If we abuse them, if we use them in the wrong way too early, they stretch, and like any ligament they don’t go back. They don’t go back. So it’s not a matter of having sort of ruined your voice at age 16, if you can just be quiet for two years everything is going to be all right. That isn’t the way it works. It’s not like a muscle that you can massage, or you can give it an injection or something, or you can rest it, and have it be all right in a matter of time. The vocal chords don’t work like that. So I was very lucky to work with Carolyn Grant to begin to understand how the voice is produced. She was a great vocal pedagogue, what one calls the study of vocal anatomy. So I understood how all of this works: where the diaphragm is in the body, and what part of the body sort of pushes the air out of the lungs and through the trachea and past the vocal chord, and how this all works. So that it’s not some sort of mysterious thing that happens to my body, that maybe it’s good one day and maybe it’s not good the next day. At least I know how it’s meant to function, scientifically.</p> <p><strong>Science has always been a part of your life and what you do, hasn’t it?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Absolutely. It really is a part of my life. I bore the people in my family to tears. There are several doctors and nurses and so on, and I’m always talking about what I’ve just read in the American Medical Association, and one of the youngsters in my family said, “Aunt J., have you ever read <em>Vogue</em>? It’s a really very nice magazine about clothing. You like clothes. Have a look at that sometime.”</p> <p><strong>But this lifelong interest has obviously made a difference.</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Oh, yes. I think it makes a difference for any of us to understand how it is that we produce something. Whether it’s a person that is an incredible marathon winner — I can hardly wait for the Olympics — or a person that is a magnificent swimmer, to understand what muscles are engaged at what point in that production of whatever it is you’re doing… It quiets the mind to know how this thing in your body functions.</p> <p><strong>All modesty aside, how would you describe the contribution you have made in your field?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Oh, good gracious. The contribution that I’ve made in my field. First, I would say that I’ve contributed longevity, considering how long I’ve been doing this and how much I enjoy it and want to do it more.</p> <p>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 <em>fiorituri</em> 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.”</p> <p><strong>Good one.</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I don’t know where that came from, but out it came out of my mouth.</p> <p><strong>That’s a brilliant response. It’s one of the questions people have asked for many years about you. “Where does your voice belong? Where does it go?” and you have answered, “Anywhere I want it to go.”</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Exactly. Whatever we’re doing. This concert? This is the kind of soprano that I am.</p> <p><strong>But there are not many singers, not many sopranos or other opera singers, not many people who sing opera who can do that. They sing the same roles over and over and let themselves be limited that way.</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I think that that is unfortunately the truth. I think it has a great deal to do with listening to one’s handlers and all of that, because they’d like to know how to sell you. So if you sing these roles, then they know what to do. I’m not trying to accommodate them. I’m just trying to live my life in song. Wherever that takes me, that’s where I want to go. If it’s a song that Odetta made famous and it speaks to me, as it does, and I want to sing her song — which was her protest song against capital punishment, called “Another Man Done Gone” — then that’s what I want to do.</p> <p><strong>What is the most unusual thing that you’ve ever sung? What are people surprised to hear Jessye Norman sing?</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>You really love to sing.</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>Is there anybody you’d like to sing with that you haven’t sung with yet?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Yes. Herbie Hancock. I’d like to sing with Herbie Hancock playing the piano.</p> <p><strong>Do you like jazz?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Yes, I love jazz.</p> <p><strong>Can you scat?</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>How would you explain, to someone who knows nothing about your field, what makes it so exciting for you?</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p>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 Epi<em>do</em>rus, but the Greeks call it E<em>pi</em>doros, 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 <em>listening</em> 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.</p> <p><strong>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?</strong></p> <p>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 <em>Aïda</em> 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 <em>Oedipus rex</em> of Stravinsky along with <em>Dido and Aeneas</em> 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.</p> <p><strong>How did that feel?</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>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.</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>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?</strong></p> <p>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 <em>Ariadne</em> 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.</p> <p><strong>Do you think you have an affinity for German music because your career really began in Germany?</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>Of your operatic roles, which is the nearest to your heart?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Oh gosh. That would be difficult to answer. I can honestly say that I have not sung any opera roles that I didn’t really, really want to do, but I suppose if I had to choose one, I would probably choose Dido in the <em>Trojans</em> of Berlioz, because first of all the music is so beautiful and the story is glorious. You have the fourth book of the <em>Aeneid</em> as your opera libretto, and I admit that opera libretti, the words can be a little less than great literature, shall we say.</p> <p><strong>And the story is sometimes a little bit…</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: A little bit ridiculous, to say the least. I mean, try to explain the story of <em>Il Trovatore</em> of Verdi to somebody without breaking into laughter. But to have that text, the <em>Aeneid</em>, translated into French, just to have words that are that beautifully translated, and that they’re beautiful to say, and then to have them set to music. I suppose if I had to choose one, I would choose Dido.</p> <p><strong>Do you like Italian opera?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Yes, I love Italian opera. I don’t sing a great deal of Italian opera, but I love to listen to it from other people. One of my favorite roles to listen to is <em>La Traviata</em>. I love the role of Violetta in that opera. I really just love it.</p> <p><strong>But you would never sing it?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: It’s not for my voice at all. It’s not for my sort of voice, even my very different voices. There isn’t one of those voices inside of me that would suit that role. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I love to listen to other people sing it.</p> <p><strong>Have you ever felt that people discriminate against people who are bright, and who say the things that they feel, and who know perhaps more than the people who are directing them?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I’ve had the odd experience of working with my colleagues who would have preferred that I should keep quiet when I have expressed a differing opinion to what was going on. I was working, for instance, years ago — I was just thinking — working years ago for one of the Queen’s birthdays in Britain, and the conductor wanted to do some music of Scott Joplin, except I don’t think he had ever seen any music of Scott Joplin before, much less performed it. It was a slow drag which is in two. (Hums). And he was doing it in four, which is… (hums). There were a couple of other singers involved, and this was our first rehearsal, and it was with the piano, so we weren’t with the orchestra yet, and he kept doing that, and we finally had a pause in the rehearsal, and I sort of went forward. I said, “Excuse me, but actually a slow drag is in two, not four. So if we could go through that perhaps again.” And he said something like, “Well it’s your music, you must know about it.” And so I said in response, “We can talk about the Great Symphony in C of Schubert if you’d like. I have some things to say about that too.” So it shows you that people would sometimes rather you just sort of do what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to sing. You’re not supposed to point out that he’s actually conducting the piece in the wrong meter!</p> <p><strong>Do you think he said that because you happened to be the same color…</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: As the composer, yes.</p> <p><strong>Not because you could read the music.</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Yes, exactly. No, no, no, not at all.</p> <p><strong>Well, he just didn’t know you.</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: He didn’t know me, but he got to know me over time.</p> <p><strong>In 1989 you were asked to participate in a celebration in Paris, marking the bicentennial of the French Revolution. Could you describe that experience?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I was asked by President Mitterrand through an emissary of his, a year before the celebration should take place. I have been singing in France all of my performing life, and have a very special relationship which I treasure with the French musical public. I was very concerned that perhaps, because I spent so much time performing there, I was very concerned that perhaps President Mitterrand thought that I was from Haiti, or from Cameroon, or from a former French colony in Africa or somewhere. So I said to the person who was asking me this on the behalf of the President, Monsieur du Pavignon was his name, I said, “Does the President realize that I’m American, and that I’m not French in any way?” He said, “Yes, the President probably knows what he’s doing. Thank you, Miss Norman.” I was very flattered, of course, and on the occasion of singing this national anthem for the bicentennial of the French Revolution it still sounds kind of implausible. I was very comfortable. I was very happy to be a part of it, and everybody else around me — the people that were responsible for it — were as nervous as they could be. I mean at one point, one of the people in charge of the entire sort of parade, as we call it — it’s called a <em>défilé</em> in French — came to me and said, “Are you nervous?” and so I said no. And he said, “How can you not be nervous going out to sing for three billion people watching on television all over the world, not to mention the people that are actually on the Champs-Élysées and at the Place de la Concorde?” And so I said,” I practiced, I know the tune, I’ve practiced the words. You could wake me up in the middle of the night and say, ‘Sing the third verse of the national anthem of France,’ and it would come out of me, so I’m just going to have a good time. I get to wear the tricolor, the French colors, as a dress, as an American singing the <em>Marseillaise</em>. I’m not nervous. I’m having a wonderful evening.” And I did have a wonderful evening.</p> <p><strong>What’s harder to sing, “The Star-Spangled Banner” or the <em>Marseillaise</em>?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It is unsingable. No, truly, and I know that there are people who say, “She must be absolutely crazy,” but I really do feel that “The Star-Spangled Banner,” it covers too much territory. That is an octave and a fifth. That means you’ve got 13 notes that are incorporated into our national anthem. For a song that is to be sung by a general public, one octave is enough. And the song that I wish we had as a national anthem is “America the Beautiful.” It doesn’t talk about war, it doesn’t talk about anything except for the beauty of this land, and the joy that we should have in being in this land, and it’s a much more — for me — a much more beautiful song, even though I understand completely the rousing that happens in the heart from listening just to the opening bars of “The Star Spangled Banner.”</p> <p><strong>Would you sing “America the Beautiful” at Yankee Stadium to kick off a game?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Why not? Absolutely. I’ve sung “America the Beautiful” for the tennis open. Why not?</p> <p><strong>You’ve performed in at least two one-woman operas where you’re the only singer on stage, singing continuously without a break, <em>Erwartung</em> and <em>La voix humaine</em>. In 1989 you performed <em>Erwartung</em> back-to-back with <em>Bluebeard’s Castle</em>, where there’s only one other singer on stage. How do you prepare for such a taxing and demanding performance?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: It’s kind of perverse of me that I like sort of doing this kind of thing. I still happen to be the only singer that’s ever done <em>Erwartung</em> of Schoenberg and <em>La voix humaine</em> of Poulenc on the same evening. <em>La voix humaine</em> is “the human voice.” The play is by Jean Cocteau and the music is by Francis Poulenc and these are very demanding and every different characters and very different operas, but I enjoy the challenge. I mean I’ve also done in one evening — going back to <em>The Trojans</em>. Having mentioned that Dido, if I had to choose one role, that I would choose that one. But I’ve also — because <em>The Trojans</em> is done in two parts — I’ve done Cassandra who’s the character, the female lead, in the first part, and I’ve also done Dido on the same night.</p> <p>They have a new production of <em>The Trojans</em> at Covent Garden which is wonderful, and some of the singers, I was visiting with them backstage, and one of the singers came up to me and said, “My agent told me he was at the Met when you did both parts. How in the world could you do both parts? I’m exhausted after singing Cassandra.” I said, “Well, you have to carbo load the night before. You have to prepare for that the way a marathon runner would prepare to run for 26 miles. Why anybody would want to run for 26 miles is beyond my understanding, but that’s something else again! So you have to prepare your body to have enough stored energy upon which you can call, once the day arrives that you’ve got to do this. So I eat in a completely different manner when preparing for something that’s going to happen like that the next day.</p> <p><strong>Many people play musical instruments, but your instrument, your voice, is a part of you. How do you feel about that?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: It is a responsibility, I’m very grateful for it, but at the same time, it can really get on other people’s nerves, you know, saying, “Well, we have to turn off the air conditioning,” and “I mustn’t be in a draft,” and all the rest of it. Everybody else is sort of fanning themselves because it’s so hot, and I’m sitting there saying, “But I can’t be in air conditioning, because it’ll give me sinusitis,” and all the rest of it. Sometimes, particularly the little people in my family will say, “Can’t you just take your voice out and put it on the table so that we can sit in the car in Atlanta, Georgia in the summer with the air conditioning on, please?”</p> <p><strong>People could mistake that for being temperamental, being a diva. Do they get it?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: They don’t get it. They don’t understand that all you’re doing is trying to preserve your work activity. This is your profession, and people would prefer that you not show up hoarse, and with sinusitis, and everything else that could happen from having a cold.</p> <p><strong>What do you think of contemporary popular music? Do you hear anything you like in popular music today?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Well, I try to understand the popular music of today, because I have lots of young people in my family and I want to be on top of things. So I need them to direct me as to what to listen to, and who’s the new hot thing, and all the rest of it. But I do sometimes find that it’s too facile for me, that it’s too easy. The words don’t really mean anything and the words are repeated without their meaning anything more the second time around. There is something rather wonderful and satisfying about listening to a really good text, to listen to really wonderful lyrics. That, for me, is missing in a great deal of popular music these days. People that are working in the classical field are beginning to understand also that writing for the voice in contemporary music is rather different from writing for the trombone or writing for an orchestra, and that one has to understand how the human voice works. It is not the same as another instrument, but it’s wonderful that composers are beginning to write really well for the voice.</p> <p><strong>You participated in several vocal competitions when you were starting out. Now singing contests have become very popular on television programs like <em>The Voice</em>. Can you imagine being a judge on a program like that?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I decided years ago that I would never ever work as an adjudicator. As a kid, going around singing in various competitions and various contests and so on, I decided long ago that I would never do that. I’ve been asked several times, not for that particular thing, but to adjudicate a vocal competition, and I was very flattered to be asked to do this for a jazz organization just a couple of years ago. And I said I won’t do that, because I’ve seen judges make so many mistakes that people that have had potential have been discouraged, because a judge said, “Oh well, you’re just not what we’re looking for,” or “You don’t have the right look,” or “You don’t have the right sound,” or whatever, and they’ve been discouraged. And people who really were kind of the one-pony show have been chosen, and they haven’t sort of gone beyond that one-pony show. So I determined very early in my professional life that it would take more than is, I think, available to simple humans, to be able to determine that a person at age 18 is going to still be singing or playing the violin or playing the piano at age 40. Your own experience can’t determine that. You’re a completely different person from that youngster that is on stage singing the waltz from Puccini’s <em>Bohème</em> or something.</p> <p><strong>What do you think of the situation where these relatively inexperienced singers become famous overnight, like Susan Boyle after her appearance on a British television program?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I didn’t see the show, but I’ve heard her sing since, and it’s a wonderful voice, so it’s marvelous that she was, as it were, discovered. I wish that there had been the kind of support that one would need in having that kind of exposure at that point in one’s life. It all seemed to happen very quickly, and I felt that she did not have enough people around saying, “This is going to be all right. I’m going to take care of this part of it for you. Do not worry. You don’t have to talk to everybody that wants to interview and all the rest of it.” I felt that it was an unnecessary strain on that beautiful woman. I thought that wasn’t quite fair.</p> <p><strong>What do you know about achievement now that you didn’t know when you were younger?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I have learned that achievement is ongoing. It’s like learning, that you don’t — certainly within my performing life — you don’t get to a point where you can say, “Now I can rest. I’ve done that, so now I can sit on laurels.” That’s not the case. There’s always someone in the audience who’s never heard you before. There’s always something new that I’m performing for the first time. I like that. I love that. On a tour, I never sing exactly the same program everywhere. I want the excitement of knowing, “Oh yes. Well, we didn’t do that Cole Porter song in that group in Paris, but we’re doing it in Lyon,” because that keeps things fresh for me. I hope that it also keeps things more interesting for the audience. But certainly, I have learned that one has to go on achieving, that one doesn’t get to a level to say, “Okay, now I’m fine, don’t have to worry any more.” No, no, no. I don’t think that happens.</p> <p><strong>What does the American Dream mean to you?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: The American Dream means to me that people who need the support that can only be given by a government, that they are given what is needed in order to live, not just to survive but to thrive. I am so exhausted from hearing this business about pulling one’s self up by one’s bootstraps. There are people in our country that are not wearing boots. And that not to understand that it is the responsibility of a society to look out for the least of us is, for me, a very wrong way of looking at life and living. The American Dream is realized only when we come to the point of understanding, when we see a person that is not doing very well in life, if we can understand that “there (but for) the grace of God go I,” and that it is our responsibility to lend a hand, a hand up. People don’t want a handout, they want a hand up. And the American Dream, to me, is understanding and participating in that. Not achieving something on one’s own and letting that be all that happens in one’s life, but to understand sometimes you need to reach back. Sometimes you’ve got to reach on the side and say, “Hey, come along. Don’t be sad. This is going to work out. You’ll never walk alone.”</p> <p><strong>Speaking of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” you’ve sung that at a number of events recently.</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: I’m in Washington because of the 19th International AIDS Conference, at which I had the pleasure of singing, and to make a little speech about the wonderful people who give their time, their emotional support, their incredible scientific minds, working towards a cure — or certainly at least a vaccine — for AIDS after all these years. I told them that Rodgers and Hammerstein actually created an anthem for them long ago in <em>Carousel</em> when he wrote what they’ve been saying for 30 years to people involved and affected by AIDS, “You’ll never walk alone.” So I was very pleased to be able to sing that last night.</p> <p><strong>You’ve been very active in AIDS-related causes for many years. How did that begin?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: It was such a mystery, of course, for everybody — when the disease first appeared. And being in the performing arts, it turned out that a lot of my friends and colleagues were affected first. It was a complete mystery as to what it was, how it was passed on and all the rest of that. In a very short period I lost a lot of people — like a lot of us — a lot of friends, and was very confused by this, and decided whatever it is, we have to work towards finding out what it is, and how it is transmitted, and how it can be cured. So I started working with various organizations, principally in New York City an organization called Balm In Gilead, run by the very dynamic Pernessa Seele. They relocated to Richmond, Virginia about five years ago and they’re still very, very active. One of the things that we did was to put on a concert at the Riverside Church in about 1997, I think it was, our first one. I arranged it in the way that a Baptist Church in the South would organize a service, so that we had the choir to process in, singing a spiritual, and then we had the scripture, and Whoopi Goldberg was our preacher, and our guest in the audience happened to be Elton John. So I was able to have Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou and Anna Deavere Smith and Bill T. Jones and Max Roach at the time, all of these people sort of as a member of the congregation who just happened to be there and sort of wanted to come and sort of praise the Lord in the name of looking for a cure for AIDS.</p> <p><strong>In 1997, did you think that we would have a cure by now?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Absolutely. Already — 15 years ago at the time of this first performance — the scientists were telling us that in about 10 years’ time it could be that there would be a vaccine. But, of course, we know that didn’t happen. Everybody is still working furiously to find out what can be done. But a lot of progress has been made, in that this mother-to-child transference is now a thing of the past in the United States, and is fast becoming a thing of the past all over the world. And as was mentioned last night, by 2015 this part of the AIDS crisis should be over, and that is really very encouraging. There is a new method of determining whether or not you happen to be HIV positive, that one can do at home, that you don’t have to even use a number when it’s, of course, wanting to keep one’s medical information private. But that it is possible to do these tests at home, and to find out for yourself, in the company, hopefully, of somebody that’s going to be with you. Because it can be devastating, I’m sure, to find out this news on one’s own. But to be able to do it in the privacy of one’s own home is a great step forward, and that’s just sort of in the last month or so that that’s come to the fore.</p> <p><strong>What advice or encouragement would you give to the children in your life? What would you want to leave behind as your verbal footprint?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: As my verbal footprint? I would say that this time on earth is to be lived fully, to be enjoyed, to be of service to somebody else, not just one’s self, and that to live fully should be the goal.</p> <p><strong>This will be our last question. What is creativity and where does it come from?</strong></p> <p>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 <u>Bill Gates</u> 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.</p> <p><strong>Imagination. How has it worked in your world?</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: It works in my world by allowing me to step outside of the box, to work with Bill T. Jones. When we’re doing a performance, and we’re working on steps and so on, and Bill says, “It’s going to be 17 to the right, and then you’re going to step back with your right foot 11 times, and then you’re going to move over here on a count of three,” and I say to Bill, “Why can’t we have numbers that are even?” And he says, “Why? If you can count to ten, you can count to 11.” I think that creativity means going with whatever is in your mind that is going to make your life more interesting and fun, whether it’s your personal life or your professional life. With everything that is going on, with all of the need and the suffering in the world, that we find time to have a good time. This is a very short existence that we have on this earth.</p> <p><strong>Thank you. That was amazing.</strong></p> <p>Jessye Norman: Well, you’re very kind.</p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Jessye Norman Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>19 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66315789473684" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-001-norman-OUT20177875.jpg" data-image-caption="The magnificent Jessye Norman, photographed in 2008. (© Carol Friedman/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="Jessye Norman" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-001-norman-OUT20177875-380x252.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-001-norman-OUT20177875-760x504.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3080895008606" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-018-norman-marion-anderson-lincoln-memorial-credit-national-park-service.jpg" data-image-caption="Marian Anderson (1897-1993) in her historic Easter Sunday concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939. When the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Anderson to sing at their Constitution Hall in Washington, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her membership in the organization, and with Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, arranged for Anderson to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Anderson's courage and artistry were a source of inspiration to the young Jessye Norman. (National Park Service)" data-image-copyright="nor0-018-norman-marion-anderson-lincoln-memorial-credit-national-park-service" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-018-norman-marion-anderson-lincoln-memorial-credit-national-park-service-291x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-018-norman-marion-anderson-lincoln-memorial-credit-national-park-service-581x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-017-norman-Oct-18-image-6.jpg" data-image-caption="Three of America's great classical singers, Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman and Denyce Graves, after performing at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., 2012." data-image-copyright="nor0-017-norman-Oct 18 - image 6" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-017-norman-Oct-18-image-6-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-017-norman-Oct-18-image-6-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-016-norman-Oct-18-image-3.jpg" data-image-caption="Three of America's great classical singers, Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman and Denyce Graves, after performing at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., 2012." data-image-copyright="nor0-016-norman-Oct 18 - image 3" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-016-norman-Oct-18-image-3-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-016-norman-Oct-18-image-3-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2794612794613" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-015-norman-SF36881.jpg" data-image-caption="Milton Cross (1897-1975) confers with a technician prior to a 1940s radio broadcast. Cross hosted the weekly Metropolitan Opera Broadcast for 43 years, beginning in 1931. For listeners across the country, such as young Jessye Norman, his descriptions of the opera's action, the scenic design, and the singers' costumes, were as much a part of the performance as the music itself. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Milton Cross Speaking to Technician" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-015-norman-SF36881-297x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-015-norman-SF36881-594x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66578947368421" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-014-norman-0000247762-005.jpg" data-image-caption="Jessye Norman at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, July 1989. Norman was chosen by the President of France to perform the national anthem, "La Marseillaise," during the bicentennial celebration of the French Revolution. (© Julio Donoso/Sygma/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="Opera Singer Jessye Norman in Paris" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-014-norman-0000247762-005-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-014-norman-0000247762-005-760x506.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-013-norman-42-27854233.jpg" data-image-caption="Jessye Norman opens the 99th annual gala of the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Hall in 2010. (© Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="Entertainment" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-013-norman-42-27854233-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-013-norman-42-27854233-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66052631578947" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-012-norman-ZIB70001181.jpg" data-image-caption="Jessye Norman joins her fellow 1997 Kennedy Center Honorees: singer Bob Dylan, actress Lauren Bacall, dancer Edward Villella and actor Charlton Heston. (© Matthew Mendelsohn/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Award Recipients at the Kennedy Center Honors" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-012-norman-ZIB70001181-380x251.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-012-norman-ZIB70001181-760x502.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2903225806452" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-011-norman-AP110927027760.jpg" data-image-caption="Marian Anderson returns to the Lincoln Memorial in 1952 to sing at memorial services for former Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. It was her first appearance at the memorial since the historic 1939 concert, arranged by Secretary Ickes and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Miss Anderson sing in their Constitution Hall. Anderson's grace under pressure captured the nation. Her recordings captured listeners such as the young Jessye Norman. (Copyright Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images)" data-image-copyright="Marion Anderson Singing at the Lincoln Memorial." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-011-norman-AP110927027760-295x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-011-norman-AP110927027760-589x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-010-norman-AP10070411656.jpg" data-image-caption="Opera singer Jessye Norman takes a jazz turn at the 2010 International Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland. (AP Images/Keystone/Dominic Favre)" data-image-copyright="Jessye Norman" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-010-norman-AP10070411656-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-010-norman-AP10070411656-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.003963011889" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-009-norman-AP6111241367.jpg" data-image-caption="Australian soprano Joan Sutherland rehearses for her Metropolitan opera debut in the title role of Lucia di Lamermoor, 1961. Young Jessye Norman listened to Sutherland's performances at the Met on the radio in her bedroom in Augusta, Georgia. (Copyright Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images)" data-image-copyright="Joan Sutherland Singing During Rehearsal" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-009-norman-AP6111241367-380x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-009-norman-AP6111241367-757x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3240418118467" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-008-norman-AP3611111133.jpg" data-image-caption="The great American contralto Marian Anderson arrives in London in 1936, to perform at Queen's Hall. Acclaimed around the world, Anderson was denied permission to perform at many concert venues in the United States. Anderson was an inspiration to singers everywhere, including the young Jessye Norman. (Copyright Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images)" data-image-copyright="American Contralto Marian Anderson" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-008-norman-AP3611111133-287x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-008-norman-AP3611111133-574x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.71052631578947" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-007-norman-AP890715037.jpg" data-image-caption="American opera singer Jessye Norman sings "La Marseillaise," the French national anthem, to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution in Paris in 1989. Norman wears the French national colors, in a gown created by French designer Azzedine Alaia. (AP Images/Michel Lipchitz)" data-image-copyright="NORMAN" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-007-norman-AP890715037-380x270.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-007-norman-AP890715037-760x540.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.005291005291" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-006-norman-148962724_10.jpg" data-image-caption="American opera singer Jessye Norman, September 1984. (Photo by David Montgomery/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Jessye Norman" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-006-norman-148962724_10-378x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-006-norman-148962724_10-756x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.65526315789474" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-005-norman-111075974_10.jpg" data-image-caption="Jessye Norman visits Leningrad, Russia to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Tchaikovsky. (Photo by Helene Bamberger/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="12/01/1990. Opera singer Jessye Norman in Leningrad" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-005-norman-111075974_10-380x249.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-005-norman-111075974_10-760x498.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.65921052631579" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-004-norman-97098682_10.jpg" data-image-caption="President Barack Obama presents Jessye Norman with the National Medal of the Arts during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, 2010. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="President Obama Presents National Medal of Arts and Humanities Awards" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-004-norman-97098682_10-380x251.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-004-norman-97098682_10-760x501.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.455938697318" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-003-norman-85351864_10.jpg" data-image-caption="Jessye Norman in 1970. At age 24, she was already winning acclaim in the opera houses of Europe. (Photo by GAB Archive/Redferns. Courtesy of Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Photo of Jessye NORMAN" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-003-norman-85351864_10-261x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-003-norman-85351864_10-522x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66447368421053" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-002-norman-50426906_10.jpg" data-image-caption="Jessye Norman performs at a White House State Dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. (Photo by Diana Walker/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Elizabeth II [& Husband] [RF: England RF];Elizabeth II [& Husband] [RF: England RF];Philip [RF: England RF];Philip [RF: England RF];Jessye Norman;George H. W. Bush [& Wife]" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-002-norman-50426906_10-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nor0-002-norman-50426906_10-760x505.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0939306358382" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-et-2-Jessye-Norman-Paul-Anka-1992-Summit-Las-Vegas-003.jpg" data-image-caption="Singer-songwriter and actor Paul Anka presenting the Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award to Jessye Norman at the Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies during the 1992 Achievement Summit held in Las Vegas." data-image-copyright="wp-et-2-Jessye-Norman-Paul-Anka---1992-Summit-Las-Vegas-(003)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-et-2-Jessye-Norman-Paul-Anka-1992-Summit-Las-Vegas-003-347x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wp-et-2-Jessye-Norman-Paul-Anka-1992-Summit-Las-Vegas-003.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Twitter"><i 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href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julie-andrews/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/andrews_760_ac-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/andrews_760_ac-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Dame Julie Andrews</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Stage and Screen Actress</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2004</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts shy-introverted spiritual-religious " data-year-inducted="1990" data-achiever-name="Angelou"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-angelou/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/angelou_760_ac-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/01/angelou_760_ac-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Maya Angelou</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Poet and Historian</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1990</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts ambitious be-a-performer play-music teach-others write-music " data-year-inducted="1988" data-achiever-name="Marsalis"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/marsalis_760_ac-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/marsalis_760_ac-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Wynton Marsalis</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Pulitzer Prize for Music</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1988</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts the-arts extroverted be-a-performer ambitious analytical " data-year-inducted="2012" data-achiever-name="McDonald"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/mcd0-001a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/mcd0-001a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Audra McDonald</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Six Tony Awards</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2012</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts the-arts poverty racism-discrimination athletic shy-introverted be-a-performer play-music " data-year-inducted="2011" data-achiever-name="Mathis"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/mathis_760_ac-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/mathis_760_ac-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Johnny Mathis</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2011</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts difficulty-with-school resourceful be-a-performer " data-year-inducted="2006" data-achiever-name="Te Kanawa"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dame-kiri-te-kanawa/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/tekanawa_760_ac-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/tekanawa_760_ac-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Dame Kiri Te Kanawa</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Beloved Opera Singer</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2006</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> </footer> </div> </div> </article> <div class="modal image-modal fade" id="imageModal" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="imageModal" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="close-container"> <div class="close icon-icon_x" data-dismiss="modal" aria-label="Close"></div> </div> <div class="modal-dialog" role="document"> <div class="modal-content"> <div class="modal-body"> <figure class="image-modal__container"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <img class="image-modal__image" src="/web/20190102103115im_/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman" alt=""/>  <figcaption class="p-t-2 container"> <div class="image-modal__caption sans-2 text-white"></div>  </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </div> </main> </div> </div> <footer class="content-info main-footer bg-black"> <div class="container"> <div class="find-achiever" id="find-achiever-list"> <div class="form-group"> <input id="find-achiever-input" class="search js-focus" placeholder="Search for an achiever"/> <i class="icon-icon_chevron-down"></i> </div> <ul class="find-achiever-list list m-b-0 list-unstyled"> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/hank-aaron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hank Aaron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kareem-abdul-jabbar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lynsey-addario/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lynsey Addario</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/edward-albee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Albee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tenley-albright-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tenley Albright, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/svetlana-alexievich/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Svetlana Alexievich</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julie-andrews/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Julie Andrews</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-angelou/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Angelou</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-d-ballard-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-roger-bannister-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Roger Bannister</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-banville/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Banville</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ehud-barak/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ehud Barak</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lee-r-berger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lee R. 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Black, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elizabeth-blackburn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-boies-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Boies</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-c-bradlee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin C. Bradlee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sergey-brin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sergey Brin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carter-j-brown/"><span class="achiever-list-name">J. Carter Brown</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linda-buck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linda Buck, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-burnett/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Burnett</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-h-w-bush/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George H. W. Bush</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/susan-butcher/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Susan Butcher</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-cameron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Cameron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-s-carson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin S. Carson, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-carter/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Carter</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-cash/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Cash</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William J. Clinton</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-s-collins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/denton-a-cooley/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Denton A. Cooley, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-ford-coppola/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis Ford Coppola</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-dalio/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Dalio</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Olivia de Havilland</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-e-debakey-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael E. DeBakey, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-dell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael S. Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-doubilet/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Doubilet</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-s-fauci-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leymah-gbowee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leymah Gbowee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-john-gurdon/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir John Gurdon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Helú</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. Smith</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-sondheim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Sondheim</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonia-sotomayor/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonia Sotomayor</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wole-soyinka/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wole Soyinka</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/esperanza-spalding/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Esperanza Spalding</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/martha-stewart/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martha Stewart</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-james-b-stockdale/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/hilary-swank/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hilary Swank</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/amy-tan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Amy Tan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dame-kiri-te-kanawa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Kiri Te Kanawa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/edward-teller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Teller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/twyla-tharp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Twyla Tharp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wayne-thiebaud/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wayne Thiebaud</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lt-michael-e-thornton-usn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Michael E. Thornton, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102103115/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/charles-h-townes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Charles H. 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