Jessye Norman, the operatic soprano whose presence and voice helped
define the art form for half a century, died in a New York hospital
Monday. She was 74.
The cause, her family said in a statement released to the Associated
Press, was septic shock and organ failure. Both stemmed from a 2015
spinal injury. In May, Norman came to the Library to announce – in an
onstage conversation with Librarian Carla Hayden in the Coolidge
Auditorium — that she was donating her papers to the Library’s vast
performing arts collection. She was scheduled to appear in her native
Augusta, Ga., next week for a ceremony renaming a downtown street for
her, according to the Jessye Norman School of the Arts website.
“I’m saddened by the news about legendary opera singer Jessye
Norman,” Hayden said in a statement. “The Library is the home of her
papers, where they will be preserved to inspire future generations.
Tonight heaven has a new angel whose voice will echo through the
clouds.”
Norman, one of the most iconic figures in the international world of
music from the time she burst onto the scene in the late 1960s, received
five Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award. She also was
presented with the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts,
the Glenn Gould Prize for Music, and more than 40 honorary doctorates.
Born into harsh racial oppression in the Deep South in 1945 at a time
when segregationist laws blocked black people from participation in most
areas of life, she nonetheless became a blazing American icon of
talent, personal will and a majestic stage presence. She performed at
all of the world’s premiere opera houses, but was perhaps most
identified with New York’s Metropolitan Opera. She sang the leads in any
number of major operatic and classical works, as well those by Duke
Ellington – the latter fitting, perhaps, for a young woman who studied
at Howard University, not far from Ellington’s D.C. birthplace.
“When a freshman at Howard University, having found my way to the
Library of Congress and the vast, wonderfully welcoming reading room
where it was possible to study in peace,” she said in her May 16
appearance at the Coolidge, “I could never have imagined that years
later this august building would store papers from my professional life —
which at that time, was not imaginable either. I am honored beyond
words to express my depth of feeling, so I will simply thank you.”
Her collection, which is being processed for proper cataloguing and
research, consists of about 29,000 items. It includes musical
arrangements written specifically for her, including orchestrations of
songs by George and Ira Gershwin and the sacred music of Ellington.
There are recordings, professional and amateur photographs, mockups of
album art work, and business papers related to her opera and concert
performances.
The collection also contains correspondence, schedules and
itineraries dating from Norman’s early career in Europe, through her
debut at the Metropolitan Opera, to her unforgettable performance at the
1996 Olympic Summer Games and recent advocacy work with young people.
Rarely seen materials include correspondence regarding projects that
were never fully developed.
The papers add to the Library’s collections of legendary classical
artists, including Leonard Bernstein, Jascha Heifetz and Beverly Sills.
The collection will be available to researchers, scholars and opera
enthusiasts in the Library’s Performing Arts Reading Room.
via https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/09/jessye-norman-opera-legend-dies-at-74-her-papers-at-library-of-congress/
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