Patrick Bade
Marilyn Horne and Jessye Norman
Patrick Bade | Marilyn Horne and Jessye Norman | 03.20.24
Visuals displayed and music played throughout the presentation.
- Right, well, a couple of months ago in a talk, I ventured the probably rather stupid opinion that Rosa Ponselle was the greatest American-born opera singer of the 20th century. Stupid because really, it’s not a competition. And somebody actually in the chat at the end said, “Well, what about Marilyn Horne?” And that person could equally have said, “Well, what about Jessye Norman?” They are three amazing, amazing singers, and we are so lucky to have all three of them. It’s Marilyn Horne here on the left, Jessye Norman on the right. When I used to give my courses on the history of opera at Christie’s, I always used to start off with a series of lectures introducing national types of opera. Obviously Italian has to begin, because that’s where opera was born as an art form. And so I was talking about qualities in Italian opera that are distinct, and one thing Italian audiences love is bravura, bravura. What is bravura?
It’s kind of showing off, it’s really circus. I suppose there is a circus aspect to opera. And to demonstrate that, I always used to play this, which is the final scene from Rossini’s “La Donna Del Lago”, sung by Marilyn Horne. Now, the first time I heard Marilyn Horne live was actually in that opera, actually not in the role that you’ve just heard, which is actually the female role, but in the male role, as you see here in this photograph. That would’ve been in the 1970s. I was blown away by that virtuosity. I had never heard anything like that in my life before. In those days, I used to sometimes go backstage, you could wait in Floral Street for the singers to come out and they’d give you their autograph. And I actually said to her, “That was the most amazing piece of singing I’d ever heard in my life.” But so, but I’d like to play you, I mean, she’s such a all-round extraordinary artist.
But to get back to the question of who’s the greatest, I think I would probably stick to my view that Rosa Ponselle had the greatest voice, although Jessye Norman would certainly, you know, give her a good run for her money. It is also a fabulous and amazing and astonishing voice. To my ears, Marilyn Horne’s voice, well it’s magnificent, but it’s not quite in that league. But she’s just such a complete artist. She has everything, the virtuosity, the intelligence, the passion, she has everything you could possibly want from an opera singer. And now I want to play you something very simple, the absolute opposite of just what we’ve been listening to. This is a song I’m sure you all know, by Stephen Foster.
♪ I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair ♪ ♪ Borne like a vapour on the summer air ♪ ♪ I see her tripping where the bright streams play ♪ ♪ Happy as the daisies that dance on her way ♪ ♪ Many were the wild notes her merry voice would pour ♪ ♪ Many were the blithe birds that warbled them o'er ♪ ♪ I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair ♪ ♪ Floating like a vapour on the soft summer air ♪
A very lovely song, sung with great simplicity and sincerity. Now, she’s born on the East Coast in Pennsylvania in 1934, but her family moved to California, and she won a scholarship to the University of Southern California, and she attended the master classes of the great German Soprano Lotte Lehmann, who I’ve mentioned in so many different lectures actually, over the last couple of years. And this is a photograph of her in her student days, and she was part of a group that sang madrigals by Gesualdo. That’s her sitting on the grass on the left-hand side. This is her on the left with her husband, the conductor Henry Lewis. In her autobiography, she says that her mother was horrified when she said she was going to marry an Afro-American man. She said, “Oh, just be his mistress. For God’s sake, don’t marry him.” But although they eventually divorced, it was actually a long-lasting marriage. They were married for 19 years. And she first made an impact voicing the role of Carmen in the film of “Carmen Jones” with Dorothy Dandridge, and you can get the soundtrack of that. But she then, like many American singers, she moved to Europe. And Germany is the country, of course, with the most opera houses, and she started to make her career there. And my next excerpt actually is Handel, and for a very long time, Handel’s operas were thought to be un-stageable, un-performable. Individual arias were performed, but actually no complete opera by Handel was performed on stage between his death in 1759 and the 20th century. And I would say that Marilyn Horne played an important role in regaining the vocal skills that are necessary for the satisfactory performance of Handel. The 18th century was an age of extraordinary vocal virtuosity. And so, of course the big stars were castrati, castrated males. And she was particularly good at these, ‘cause there’s a very feisty quality in her singing that makes her convincing in male roles. So here she is again in another incredible display or vocal fireworks in “Rinaldo” by Handel.
♪ Music plays ♪
She also played a very important role in the revival of the bel canto repertoire. Rossini we’ve already heard, Donizetti, Bellini and so on. And here she was very much in partnership with the Australian soprano Joan Sutherland, and they were colleagues and great friends over many years. I love this photograph of the pair of them sitting backstage, 'cause Joan Sutherland was notoriously, how can I put it? Trying to find a polite word. Not temperamental, shall we say, and a very calm character. But an amazing thing I think about Marilyn Horne, is she clearly, you know, from this photograph, she also looks very much like a housewife doing her needle work, and a calm temperament.
But when the temperament was required, she had bags of it and could be very fiery on stage. I thought I have to play a souvenir of the two of them. You can imagine that the kind of rivalry in operas like “Norma”, when Joan Sutherland sang Norma and Marilyn Horne sang Adalgisa. And the composer is really pitting the two singers against one another, and it’s a kind of vocal competition that it could have ended badly, and it often did actually with other singers. But these two clearly got on very well together, and they really strike sparks off each other, in this duet from Rossini’s “Semiramide.”
♪ Music plays ♪
It may be perhaps for her Italian baroque and bel canto roles that she’ll be most remembered. But it seemed that there was absolutely nothing that she couldn’t sing, even Wagner. Her mentor and teacher when she was a student, was the great Lotte Lehmann. Lehmann of course, was the most famous interpreter of the role of Sieglinde in “Die Walkure.” That’s her on the left-hand side. Apparently she was not always nice to Marilyn Horne. I think probably Lehmann was, she was quite a toughie. She was a real Prussian, and probably not always charming to her students. But Marilyn Horne acknowledged what she gained, what she learned from her. And here she is in Lehmann’s favourite role of Sieglinde, singing with extraordinary passion.
♪ Music plays ♪
That’s a soprano role that shows, you know, that she has a very extended range for a singer who’s normally categorised as a mezzo. Now, another role in which she won great praise early in her career that might surprise you is Marie in Berg’s “Wozzeck.” And for this of course, you need quite different skills from the bel canto and baroque operas. She has to master the very difficult technique of , half speaking, half singing.
♪ Music plays ♪
Now, Jessye Norman is a decade younger. She was a decade younger, she’s no longer with us, sadly. Whereas of course Marilyn, whom will be celebrating her 90th birthday this year, and we wish her well. But, so Jessye Norman, born in 1945 in Atlanta, Georgia. Her father was an insurance salesman. Her mother was a teacher. Well, there’s a similar pattern to the other Afro-American singers that I’ve talked about recently. A very important role for the mother as a teacher, but also an important role for the local Baptist church in introducing her to music and singing. And she of course had the role models of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price. So her career, she didn’t have the same kind of difficulties that the singers of just a generation before had, the Afro-American singers.
The doors were now open to talent, but she still had to make the start of her career in Europe. And she also had, what she might have sort of resented slightly, at the very beginning of her career, being cast in roles that were obviously Black roles, like Aida and Selica in “L'Africaine.” But in 1968, she won a singing competition in Munich, and that led to engagements in German theatres. And all throughout her career, she had a very deep affinity with the German language and with German music. And her voice, it is such a phenomenal voice, huge, huge voice. It’s hard to actually categorise or define. In terms of size, you would say yes, dramatic soprano, the biggest type of soprano voice.
But often I think her most beautiful singing is in very gentle and intimate things, rather than huge, loud, dramatic roles. And also her range, I mean the colour of her voice, the colour of her voice, the timbre of her voice, is a very dark one. In the lower parts of the voice, she really has an almost sort of contralto quality. But she was able to go up to, certainly up to a high C when necessary, though I think she’s probably more comfortable in the middle of the voice than right at the top. The first time I saw her was in “Tannhauser” at the Royal Opera House, and I can’t say the very first time I was that impressed.
Then shortly afterwards at a prom, she sang some Strauss orchestral songs. And oh my God, I was so amazed. Maybe my reaction was in some ways a racist reaction, because there this young, this woman from Alabama, and you think, “What does she know about Strauss lieder?” You know, it’s such a special thing, such a special area. There aren’t that many non-German singers of any colour really, who really get inside these Strauss lieder, but she does. And the voice, which has this gorgeous, creamy quality, is absolutely ideal for Strauss orchestral songs.
♪ Music plays ♪
Yeah gorgeous, radiant top in the climax of that song. But as I said, she’s particularly good I think, at music that requires what the German call . There isn’t really a proper word in English to translate . Katrina at the end, she’ll probably give me a good translation for . It’s , and she’s very good at these very gentle, feminine roles like Weber’s Euryanthe. Now, the opera “Euryanthe” by Weber has two female roles that can be sung by two sopranos, or by a soprano and a mezzo. And when they made that complete recording, I think that must have been in the late '70s, Rita Hunter was cast in the villainous soprano role. And it’s a fantastic recording, you’ve got two amazing voices.
They are two of the greatest voices I ever heard live, and wonderfully contrasted. You’ve got this warm, creamy voice with no edge to it of Jessye Norman, and Rita Hunter, I mean, it’s a bright, shining kind of slightly metallic voice, like a shining sword. And when it came out, all the critics commented on how interesting the contrast between the two voices was. Sometimes people have asked me after my lectures, “What do you mean when you talk about the timbre or the colour of the voice?” But I think when I’m going to play you these two voices together, you’ll hear very clearly a bright, shining voice, and a much darker, mellower voice.
At the time this recording was made, I knew Rita Hunter quite well. She used to occasionally, she was very nice to her fans, and I was a big fan of Rita Hunter, and she occasionally invited me for meals at her house. She’s a lovely woman, but she was a bit paranoid, and she was absolutely convinced that the engineers in the recording studio had something to do with the difference in timbre, they’d been twiddling the knobs, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think this is really how the two voices were.
♪ Music plays ♪
She was very identified, as I said, with German opera. She also sang a number of French roles, particularly Didon in the Berlioz “Trojans.” She didn’t get to sing an awful lot of Italian opera, apart from Aida early in her career. But I’m going to play you, show you that she could sing it, and also that the voice could be flexible, and move swiftly and accurately. And this is from an aria from a very early opera by Verdi that’s not very often done, called “Un Giorno di Regno.” ♪ Music plays ♪
Now, Jessye Norman was a big woman. But I think in her way she was very beautiful, and she had a wonderful dignity, a very enormous, sort of queenly stage presence. So it was natural that, you know, for great occasions like the opening of the Montreal Olympics, the inaugurations, the second inauguration of Reagan, the second inauguration of Clinton, for Queen Elizabeth II’s 60th birthday, she was chosen to sing on these occasions. And perhaps most famously in 1989, actually was, the French asked her to come and sing the “Marseilles” at the celebration of the bicentenary of the French Revolution. And for that, this fabulous dress was concocted for her by the very brilliant Tunisian couturier, Azzedine Alaia, who you see with her, was completely dwarfed by her.
And here she is on that occasion, in La Place de la Concord in the centre of Paris, singing the “Marseilles.” And she’s a goddess, what can you say? Now, I know that many of you will have your own favourite versions of the Strauss “Four Last Songs.” That can turn into quite a dinner party battle, people fiercely defend and love their own favourite version. And many people love Jessye Norman’s version, and it is wonderful. And for me, it’s not my favourite version, It has nothing to do with her singing, which is really sublime. It’s more to do with the acoustic, what the engineers have done to this recording, as a kind of soupy bathroom. But certainly her singing is impeccable.
♪ Music plays ♪
It is wonderful to hear that huge voice floating so airily over the top of the orchestra. But I want to, that may be a feel-good thing for many of you, but I want to end with another kind of feel-good song. So we’re going to go back to the great Marilyn Horne in a traditional American song arranged by Aaron Copeland, and the way she colours the words in this and the humour she brings to it, it always, always brings a smile to my face.
♪ I bought me a cat, my cat pleased me ♪ ♪ I fed my cat under yonder tree ♪ ♪ My cat says, fiddle-I-fee ♪ ♪ I bought me a duck, my duck pleased me ♪ ♪ I fed my duck under yonder tree ♪ ♪ My duck says quack, quack ♪ ♪ My cat says, fiddle-I-fee ♪ ♪ I bought me a goose, my goose pleased me ♪ ♪ I fed my goose under yonder tree ♪ ♪ My goose says ♪ ♪ My duck says quack, quack ♪ ♪ My cat says, fiddle-I-fee ♪ ♪ I bought me a hen, my hen pleased me ♪ ♪ I fed my hen under yonder tree ♪ ♪ My hen says, shimmy shack, shimmy shack ♪ ♪ My goose says ♪ ♪ My duck says quack, quack ♪ ♪ My cat says, fiddle-I-fee ♪ ♪ I bought me a pig, my pig pleased me ♪ ♪ I fed my pig under yonder tree ♪ ♪ My pig says, griffey, griffey ♪ ♪ My hen says shimmy shack, shimmy shack ♪ ♪ My goose says ♪ ♪ My duck says quack, quack ♪ ♪ My cat says, fiddle-I-fee ♪ ♪ I bought me a cow, my cow pleased me ♪ ♪ I fed my cow under yonder tree ♪ ♪ My cow says ♪ ♪ My pig says, griffey, griffey ♪ ♪ My hen says shimmy shack, shimmy shack ♪ ♪ My goose says ♪ ♪ My duck says quack, quack ♪ ♪ My cat says, fiddle-I-fee ♪ ♪ I bought me a horse, my horse pleased me ♪ ♪ I fed my horse under yonder tree ♪ ♪ My horse says, neigh, neigh ♪ ♪ My cow says ♪ ♪ My pig says, griffey, griffey ♪ ♪ My hen says shimmy shack, shimmy shack ♪ ♪ My goose says ♪ ♪ My duck says quack, quack ♪ ♪ My cat says, fiddle-I-fee ♪ ♪ I bought me a wife, my wife pleased me ♪ ♪ I fed my wife under yonder tree ♪ ♪ My wife says, honey, honey ♪ ♪ My horse says neigh, neigh ♪ ♪ My cow says ♪ ♪ My pig says, griffey, griffey ♪ ♪ My hen says, shimmy shack, shimmy shack ♪ ♪ My goose says ♪ ♪ My duck says quack, quack ♪ ♪ My cat says fiddle-I-fee ♪
Yeah, well that’s cats for you, isn’t it? They say fiddle-I-fee. And I love the wife who who says, “Honey, honey.”
Q&A and Comments
So let’s see, it would be interesting to, now did they? I’d have to think about that. Of course it’s always a very good thing, isn’t it? To compare two singers. I need to think about, I don’t think they had all that much repertoire in common. And yes, there are lots of queens of the night you could put together. “1983, Metropolitan Opera celebrated centenary, the 'New York Times’ engaged panels of experts to rate the greatest singers in all voice categories who’d appeared in the last 100 years. The only category in which the winner was on the active roster was the mezzo-soprano, who’s Marilyn Horne, who’s also” I think Dennis, I think you told me that before, and that’s very interesting and I would be happy to go along with that. Catrine, cannot be easily translated, thank you.
Mixture of depth, warmth, sincerity, intensity, but nothing really captures the word properly. It’s so interesting. There are lots of German words for which you just, there is no English translation, you just have to use the, and I’m glad you agree with me that Jessye has this quality. “A bit of strain to listen to such lengthy high register singing. A bit of bass baritone would,” yeah, well maybe. I don’t know, I like the soprano voice myself. I never get sick of it. Yes, thank you Rita, she is a goddess. I don’t know how, well she looks like a giant compared to poor little Azzedine Alaia, but I think he was probably very, very small. Oh, I knew I could rely on you.
Thank you so much, David. Is six foot one, so she really was, so she really was very tall. “The French Mali woman chosen to sing at the Paris Olympics and the controversy,” I don’t know anything about that, actually. I don’t know about that, I’ll follow that up. “Did,” no, she didn’t sing it in the movie. It was a singer, what was her name? Hernandez. She was very beautiful in the movie, and she sang it very beautifully. Wilhelmina Higgins Fernandez, her name was, but not my idea of a true diva. We might have a little disagreement there. Try listening to somebody like Magda Olivero, or Callas of course is a true diva, I would say. This is Barbara, “Some years ago I heard Kiri Te Kanawa sing the ‘Four Last Songs’ accompanied by Schulte in what was then the Free Trade Hall in Manchester.” Right, well I can’t comment on that.
This is Hillary, “Once lived in New York, on the same flight as Jessye Norman. We had apples with us that we could not take the US, so we shared them with her. We all sat on our suitcases eating apples, and she was utterly charming and friendly and informal. No sign of a diva.” The only time, I met her once actually, and also I found her completely charming and very friendly. I mean, she was just signing an autograph for me, actually. And I was pleading with her to record the role of Iseult, which she never did, unfortunately. Thank you again, Rita. It’s always nice to get your positive comments. And Wilhelmenia Fernandez, that’s right. You’re quite right, she sang in “La Wally.” Interiority, yes I suppose so. But it’s an ugly word, interiority, isn’t it? And it’s not one that we really use.
Thank you, Anita. “Marilyn Horne was perhaps the major coach of Nadine Sierra.” She’s a very generous woman, Marilyn Horne. And you know, unlike many other singers, she could be generous to colleagues and rivals. For instance, my absolute favourite singer of all time, Magda Olivero, only got to sing at the Met very late in her career at the age of 65, ‘cause Marilyn Horne had heard her and she said to the Met, “You’ve got to get this woman.” And it was thanks to her that Magda sang at the Met.
“BBC, Aya Nakamura, Paris Olympics culture rows. As far right,” oh God, well surprise, surprise. “Chichi’s a festival,” Neetza. That’s early, early '70s, lucky them to have got that. And there’s Anita who actually, singing the chorus. I remember another time I heard Jessye Norman was actually at the proms, and it was “Gurre-Lieder”, and there are 600 singers and musicians on the stage. But when she opened up, with no effort whatsoever, she just sailed over the 600 other people on the stage. It was amazing. And I know she, yes, she gave a famous performance in Tel Aviv, which was hugely successful.
Thank you, thank you all very much indeed. And I think my next rendezvous with you is in a week’s time.