Stand Up Straight and Sing!

by Jessye Norman

  Working with Bill T. on How! Do! We! Do!, which premiered at New York’s City Center in 1999, was a revelation: I witnessed the depths to which he was prepared to reach in order to find that thing that would satisfy his idea of a movement, a gesture, the lighting, the appropriate apparel. I learned, too, after some resistance, to do something that dancers do all the time, and that is to count dance steps in uneven numbers. It may sound simple, but believe me, it is not, if you are also working hard not to seem as though you have no coordination at all. I managed to relax and take in many new thoughts and to simply allow Bill’s brilliance to speak.

  The result was an evening of sheer joy in movement, talk, and music, all of which seemed totally and completely improvised, even though we had worked together for months. One of a kind, indeed. In our show, we offered some of the stories of our lives in poetry, movement, and song. Bill sang a little; I moved in tandem with him (I would not be so bold as to say that I danced!). We shared our love and deep admiration for our own art forms, as well as those beyond our individual disciplines—because love is easy to share, love is easy to demonstrate, love is easy to accept when the whole heart is involved.

  Long live art, long live friendship, long live the love of life!

  L’île inconnue, Les nuits d’été • HECTOR BERLIOZ Island of the Unknown

  ***

  Dites, la jeune belle, où voulez-vous aller? Tell me, young girl, where do you wish to go?

  La voile enfle son aile, la brise va souffler. The sails swell in the breeze,

  L’aviron est d’ivoire, The oar is of ivory

  Le pavillon de moire, The flag of silk

  Le gouvernail d’or fin; The helm of finest gold

  J’ai pour lest une orange, For ballast, I have an orange

  Pour voile une aile d’ange, I have the wing of an angel for the sail

  Pour mousse un séraphin. For a deck hand, a seraphim.

  Est-ce dans la Baltique, Shall we go to the Baltic Sea?

  Dans la mer Pacifique? To the Pacific Ocean?

  Dans l’île de Java? To the island of Java?

  Où bien est-ce en Norwége, Or perhaps to Norway

  Cueillir la fleur de neige, To take a flower of snow

  Où la fleur d’Angsoka? Or the flower of Angsoka?

  Dites, la jeune belle, Tell me, young girl,

  Dites, où voulez-vous aller? Where would you like to go?

  Menez-moi, dit la belle, The young girl said, “Take me

  À la rive fidèle To the shore of faithfulness

  Où l’on aime toujours. Where love knows no end.”

  Cette rive, ma chère, My dear, this shore

  On ne la connaît guère One hardly knows at all

  Au pays des amours. In the universe of love.

  8

  The Song, the Craft, the Spirit, and the Joy!

  “THE LORD’S PRAYER”

  Our Father, which art in Heaven,

  Hallowed be Thy name,

  Thy kingdom come,

  Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

  Give us this day, our daily bread,

  And forgive us our trespasses

  As we forgive those who trespass against us

  And lead us not into temptation,

  But deliver us from evil.

  For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever,

  A-men

  I am asked often who my favorite composers are—which of the songs I sing in recital or the roles I perform on the stage are my most beloved. This, I find, is unusually simple to answer: all of them! I could not possibly say that I prefer Wagner or Strauss or Berlioz over Schubert or Mozart or Brahms. Ellington over Gershwin or Cole Porter. I sing the music—and this is really true—that I love. There is so much music in this world, I cannot think of a single reason to perform anything that does not give me pleasure and that fails to give something back to me. All of this giving out, this grateful sharing with the audience, is replenished. I am refilled by the music, by the very act of singing!

  Many different factors are at play in my choosing repertoire: chief among these is whether or not the music will expand my thoughts and my horizons, and increase my knowledge and understanding of my craft. I am certainly drawn to beautiful melodies, or perhaps it is that the text is so beautiful and I am so grateful that someone has set those particular words to music, that I add that song to my “to do” list immediately. Sometimes, I might find myself wanting to sing a particular piece in order to perform with a particular ensemble. The ways of finding repertoire are endless and great fun.

  I am surely open to suggestions. It was my pal Michael Tilson Thomas who said in about 2007 that I should think about the music of John Cage, whose centenary would arrive in 2012. He was sure I would find this music challenging and enjoyable.

  And it happens that he was absolutely correct. We have been having the best time performing this music in various places with members of the San Francisco Symphony. We performed at Ann Arbor, at my former school there, the University of Michigan, and at Carnegie Hall. Plus, I have realized a great fantasy in working with Joan La Barbara and Meredith Monk, both of whom had the opportunity of working directly with John Cage. What a group!

  I find it difficult to respond to the question of my creative process, as I work, I would think, in unconventional ways. I work first alone at the piano, and delay working with my piano accompanist or with the conductor until my own ideas about the composition have come together, at least to a degree.

  Language is of course extremely important to me. The only language in which I sing that I do not speak or that I have not studied as a language is Hebrew.

  Long ago I purchased a book with the wonderful title Hebrew in Ten Minutes a Day. The publisher neglected to mention how many decades of ten-minute sessions this might require. When I received the joyous invitation to perform and record Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle with Pierre Boulez, I learned to read Hungarian. I had to do this! It was an utterly different preparation process than rehearsing an opera written in French, for instance. I had tutors on both sides of the Atlantic working with me from the same textbook so that each would know where I was in my studies when our turn to work together came. It was marvelous, like being in school again.

  I ONCE GAVE serious consideration to taking a year off and preparing Racine’s Phèdre, the play, to perform onstage, as I was so enamored of the words. And then, as mentioned earlier, when the opportunity arose to sing the role of Phèdre in Rameau’s opera Hippolyte et Aricie, and I discovered that the libretto used the precise wording of Racine, I did not hesitate to accept. The production in Aix-en-Provence gave me the added opportunity of working with two new opera directors at the time, Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser. We worked diligently together on the three scenes of Phèdre, and I am thrilled that there is video documentation of the results, as to date I have performed this role only at that festival. The actual director for the production, Pier Luigi Pizzi, was happy to have the three of us working away on the stage during the height of the afternoon sun, when no one else wished to do anything other than have a good lunch and a siesta. In hot sun and all, we mapped out (or, in theater jargon, blocked) the scenes and went forward from there. Pizzi left us to our own devices. It was a pleasure to work unhurried and in music and words that provided their own cooling, calming atmosphere to that very warm stage.

  I am ever grateful to Richard Strauss for having produced so much beautiful music that is particularly suited to the female voice. From the moment I heard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs), I wished to sing them. They remain such an integral part of my repertoire that I cannot imagine my singing life without them. In fact, some years ago, representatives from Strauss’s family presented me with a large portrait of the composer during the Salzburg summer festival. It is one of my most treasured possessions, but I keep only a small photo of the portrait on display in my bookroom, as the portrait really needs a bigger space than my home can
provide.

  I admire the critical acclaim that Strauss enjoyed during his lifetime as well as the financial success that came with his being a celebrated composer. Strauss is believed to be the first composer to have received royalty payments from the publication and performance of his compositions. Think of all the composers who preceded him who could not so much as have dreamed of such good fortune.

  Sometimes I think what a beautiful thing it would be to go back in time and invite Franz Schubert to dinner. A composer with music in his every pore, who gave us nearly a thousand works of art in his short lifetime, Schubert was barely able to sustain himself financially. I fantasize about planning the grandest of dinner parties for him and then sending him on his way after a fine supper, to return again soon, for another.

  Even in the last years of his bountiful life, Strauss was evolving, creating, and learning—and composing what I feel to be some of his most enduring works. The poems he employed in Four Last Songs—“Im Abendrot” (“Glow of the Evening”), by Joseph von Eichendorff, and “Frühling” (“Spring”), “September,” and “Beim Schlafengehen” (“On the Sleep Eternal”), by Hermann Hesse—are quite simply magnificent. “Beim Schlafengehen” embodies the calm, peace, and expectations that should come with the end of one’s physical life: the wonders of the afterlife—“You will fly on wings of light and glory into a life anew.” What a wonderful thought: the afterlife as something beautiful that beckons us and that we should not fear. It is a thought that other cultures have embraced as well. The Chinese, for example, have held this idea for thousands of years, believing that we spend our lives on earth preparing for the next experience. Then there is the celebration of spring in “Frühling,” welcoming new growth out of the somber mood of winter. For me, this song is spiritual in a profound way. Trust in the newness, the certainty that the bare trees will fill with green, and flowers, long asleep, will awaken with such glorious colors to gladden any spirit. The cycle of life.

  I find particular enjoyment in “September,” since September happens to be my birth month, and the beauty of the change of seasons at this time of year has always been special to me. Remember the thrill of falling into a pile of colorful autumn leaves that were green just weeks prior? Think of the scent of autumn, the coolness that greets the morning dew and comes again with the early setting of the sun.

  “Im Abendrot” is for me a grand celebration of the fullness of life: the joys and the sadness, lived hand in hand with another; a connection of the heart and the soul until the end.

  “The time for rest from this life is near as all becomes quiet and calm in this stillness, in this waiting.”

  Who would not feel blessed to be able to share the experience of these songs with an audience?

  Speaking of the Chinese philosophy of the afterlife, I must also mention Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, the text of which is translated from Chinese into German. This wonderful composition for two voices is a full-length symphonic work that never ceases to inspire in its celebration of the peace and joy of life on earth expanding into eternal life: the philosophy of spiritual continuance as a never-ending phenomenon. My gratitude in being able to perform these two spectacular compositions, the Strauss and the Mahler, is without bounds.

  JOINING THE WORLD of Italian opera on a stage served already by a truly stunning array of singers, masters of this repertoire, did not hold my interest. Other than Tosca, I cannot really claim personal interest in the stirring and ever popular operatic roles of Puccini. I did perform Aida in the beginning years of my singing life, and made recordings of some of Verdi’s first operas. Lady Macbeth is, for me, probably the most fully captivating of the Verdi roles. This grabs and holds fast my attention.

  I live so happily in my wide mélange of periods of composition, composers, styles, and genres. Bach, Handel, Purcell, the music of la belle France, the German romanticism that is at the center of my “to sing” list, along with endless choices from the first and second Viennese schools, keep me up late at night in preparation and as happy as can be onstage. Not to mention music composed here and now, and my boundless devotion to the songs of the American musical theater and all that jazz!

  Richard Wagner’s operas provide me with truly tremendous performance experiences. Yet I doubt that he and I would have been friends, given his well-documented, limited embrace of humankind. But there his music sits in the virtual center of my operatic repertoire.

  I think one has to separate the character of the composer from the art. If we were to judge art according to the character of those who created it, we would dismiss a lot of artists, and miss some truly magnificent art. We would be bereft of a great deal of glorious music. I do not welcome those occasions when one is expected to “justify” a love of Wagner’s music and a desire to perform it: I am happy to leave that debate to those who prefer not to view the operas of Richard Wagner simply as a gift. That this inspiration landed in the mind and heart of a person whose character might not be compatible with ours is one of those accidents, one of those purposeful accidents of nature.

  Music has great power and can have meaning attached to it far beyond a composer’s intentions and purpose. Such is the music not only of Wagner, but also of Richard Strauss: Wagner because of reasons that are well known, but also Strauss, whose work during the period of the Nazi regime calls into question his actual political beliefs. I was therefore somewhat surprised when, while planning for the 1994 concert season of the Israel Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta suggested that we program songs by Strauss. He stated that he and the orchestra had performed Strauss’s tone poem Till Eulenspiegel the previous season and that the music had been accepted. Still, I had my concerns.

  I agreed to go forward with this plan of offering our program of the songs with the proviso that I would make clear publicly that I remained in complete and utter sympathy with anyone who might be offended by our programming. I also wanted to assure the Israel Philharmonic’s thousands of subscribers that I would be returning to Israel with other music in the not too distant future. The print interviews took place and were completed even prior to the first rehearsals with the orchestra; I was more settled and ready for the work ahead, once they were done.

  When rehearsing for the first time with an orchestra, I always sing while facing the musicians, so that we all can get to know one another a bit better, and such was the case with the Israel Philharmonic. My heart skipped a beat or two when I noticed the intense joy in some of the faces of the orchestral members as they played—many for the very first time—Strauss’s song “Zueignung,” a song about devotion in its strongest, most sincere of terms. After rehearsing others of the five songs I would perform, I could see the orchestra members relax into allowing themselves to participate with their hearts, too, in their always splendid playing. It was such a special moment. Richard Strauss was not given absolution, perhaps, but his music was allowed to find a place in some new spirits and minds.

  In order to accommodate the thousands of subscribers to the orchestral concerts in Israel, the performances are offered several times, and this was our plan here, as well.

  Meanwhile, friends who could not be with me were keeping close tabs on things, as they knew that there was the possibility for unpleasantness. So I was not surprised to hear the fax machine churning in my room on the early morning of the first performance. I did not get up to read the transmission immediately, thinking that it was wiser to get a bit more rest on a performance day. There seemed to be a bit more commotion outside my window than on previous days, too, but I allowed this to happen without being too concerned.

  It was only after rising and reading the fax that my heart sank. A friend had seen on television that for the first time in Tel Aviv, a bomb had gone off on a city bus. I was advised to turn on the television news, which I did. Upon discovering rather quickly that my hotel was a short walk from the scene of the bombing, I wondered what would happen as a result of this attack. Soon after, the orchestral manager called to inform me that
the evening’s concert would go forward and that I should not worry.

  At Mann Auditorium that evening, concert preparations seemed to be moving at a normal pace. It helped that Zubin Mehta was very supportive and assured me by saying something like, “Music will help at such a moment.” I did not doubt the premise, but really, I was concerned about our choice of repertoire on this particular day, in this particular city.

  The concert went very well, and at the end, the maestro asked if I might sing an unaccompanied Spiritual. As this was an unusual request following a performance with orchestra, where in normal circumstances an encore would have been prepared with the orchestra accompanying, I was at first surprised. Yet I agreed readily to sing; I understood that these were not normal circumstances. At the very moment that I began to say, “I wish to sing in memory of those who lost—” someone from the audience yelled out, “Don’t mix politics and music. Just sing!” And I obeyed.

  Without music, life would be a mistake.

  —Nietzsche

  Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

  —Plato

  Music doesn’t lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.

  —Jimi Hendrix

  Another opportunity to perform in Israel came in the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of this great nation. I was so honored to be invited to sing. It was high summer and the performance would take place in a momentous location. Standing atop Masada on that very warm July day, I thought repeatedly of the history of this mountain and of how that history, so many, many years ago, mirrored that of my own ancestors, and I was moved to tears more than once during the course of the experience. I would sing in Hebrew. I had rehearsed and rehearsed, and I was prepared. I was to sing “Jerusalem” live, but to a soundtrack the orchestra had recorded two days prior to the filming. This was a very special difficulty, as no matter the number of takes needed in order to achieve the preferred camera shots, I would be obligated to sing the song the same way each time, for each rehearsal on the site.