Jessye Norman. Singer - ACE163.6

Norman at Constitution Hall, Washington; commentary explains that Marian Anderson was barred from performing there in 1939 because she was black. Norman’s VO talking about hearing Anderson in concert in Constitution Hall when she was a student. Photograph, recording over of Anderson singing Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria. McGinty points out that, for Norman’s generation, Anderson embodied what a black singer could become. Norman says that Eleanor Roosevelt used her influence to allow Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial; news-film of the event with Anderson singing Ave Maria. Norman near the Lincoln Memorial. Commentary says that after her appearance at Constitution Hall in 1968, she was given a new impetus internationally. Norman explains that she appeared at a special audition, in front of directors of European opera houses invited by J Ralph Corbett, for young singers. Photographs of Egon Seefehlner of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, who offered her a contract. Norman talks about not wanting to take on roles she felt she was not suited to, and which she feared might upset her voice. Norman in make-up. Commentary says she took a five-year break from the opera stage in order to allow her voice to develop; after this she sang a number of "Greek" roles, and returned to Covent Garden in 1985 in Ariadne auf Naxos. Norman VO says that this is the right time for her to be singing Ariadne, rather than when she was in her twenties. There had been roles she wanted to sing but knew she should not. She likes Ariadne because of its "Shakespearian quality". Performance, Norman singing "Es gibt ein Reich, wo alles rein ist". Her VO explains the aria. Norman talking about the scene in which Ariadne mistakes Bacchus for Hermes, the messenger of death. Performance.