Jessye Norman

Jessye Mae Norman was born on the fifteenth of September 1945 in Augusta, Georgia, one of five children in a musical Black family. Her father, Silas Norman, sold life insurance and sang as a soloist in the choir of the family's Mount Calvary Baptist Church; her mother, Janie King Norman, was a schoolteacher and amateur pianist who saw that each child received piano lessons. From this home of church song and keyboard practice, a voice of extraordinary size and warmth began to take shape.

She won a scholarship to Howard University in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1967, and pursued further study at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore and the University of Michigan. Victory at the Bavarian Radio International Music Competition in 1968 opened the door to Europe, where she made her operatic debut in 1969 as Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Her instrument — a dramatic soprano of vast range, plush color, and commanding presence — carried her to the world's foremost stages. On the twenty-sixth of September 1983 she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Cassandre in Berlioz's Les Troyens during the company's centennial season, beginning a distinguished association with the house. Equally renowned in concert and recital, she recorded prolifically and won multiple Grammy Awards.

Among many honors, she received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1997 and the 2009 National Medal of Arts, presented by President Barack Obama. She founded the Jessye Norman School of the Arts in her native Augusta to open doors for gifted young people. She died on the thirtieth of September 2019 in Manhattan, aged seventy-four. May the majesty of her voice, and the generosity of her spirit, be honored for as long as music is sung.