Jessye Norman Was a Diva, in the Best Way – The New York Times, The New York Times

Singing with penetrating power is not the same as singing forcefully or loudly. To understand the crucial difference you had only to hear the soprano Jessye Norman in the early 1980 s, during the prime years of her storied career.

Norman,who died on Monday at 74, sang an ornate Mozart concert aria with Classical-era elegance, she fleshed out the notes with a plush, sumptuous sound and sent phrases soaring effortlessly over an orchestra. This never felt strident: In the title role ofStrauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos”or as Wagner’s tormentedKundry in “Parsifal,”it seemed that her opulent tone was not originating from her body, but enveloping you, coming at you from all the corners of the opera house. Her voice penetrated;

[Read the obituary for Jessye Norman.]

Ms. Norman was not a fiery singer, though in flashes she could turn ominous. Overall, her temperament tended to be majestic and regal, a touch haughty at times. Still, she had charisma to spare. The sheer sound of her voice was transfixing. And her control of floating pianissimo phrases was just as wondrous.

I remember a 1986 recital at Symphony Hall in Boston, just after I had started writing reviews for The Boston Globe. She sang songs of Mahler and Brahms with glowing warmth and grave beauty, and had an elusive, expressionist Berg song sounding like the most sublimely lyrical music imaginable.

For a singer of her stature and popularity, however, Ms. Norman attracted more than her share of criticism, especially during the 1990 s, when her technique grew unreliable and that earlier grandeur became a kind of grandiosity. The critic Peter G. Davis, in his 1997 book “The American Opera Singer,” was quite blunt. Her 1991 Kundry at the Metropolitan Opera, he wrote, was marred by “overbearing attitudinizing” and “exaggerated vocal mannerisms.”

Though harsh, he was not alone in this perception. As someone who had thrilled to her earlier work, I was distressed to hear her in a 1998 recital at Carnegie Hall, a program of songs by Poulenc, Chausson and Ellington with a string quartet, pianist and some Alvin Ailey dancers. The occasion was festive, and the reception enthusiastic, but Ms. Norman’s singing was spotty. What happened in those later years?

How any “attitudinizing” crept into her performances was hard to fathom, given the authenticity she brought to her artistry at her best. She writes beautifully in her memoir “Stand Up Straight and Sing!” About hearing her grandmother singing songs and spirituals, whether happy or melancholy, always “beautiful, deeply soulful and right”; Ms. Ms. Norman carried on this traditionwith unforgettable spirituals performances.

Every television image of “African-Americans being run down with water hoses and chased by dogs,” she recalled, brought long lectures from her parents that “we were just as good as anyone who breathes on this planet. ”Perhaps that beautiful pride eventually became a kind of hauteur, but at first it instilled determination in the young Ms. Norman, the daring to take on weighty Wagner and Strauss roles so early, as well as intense curiosity for the world beyond her homeland. So she embraced the opportunity to sing with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, then, in 1975, moved to London and stopped singing staged opera for five years to develop her voice and work on other

Maybe it was inevitable, but during the London years, Ms. Norman started speaking with a trace of a British accent that sometimes slipped into her singing. She insisted in interviews that this wasn’t an affectation, but the result of her penchant for mimicry. If it helped make her sometimes come across like a stereotypical diva, so be it, Ms. Norman felt. The connotation of that oft-denigrated term – that is, an artist willing to be demanding for a higher purpose – actually appealed to her.

She also, to her credit, shot back at critics who argued that her big body was an impediment to realistic acting. “It’s people like that who give me enormous energy,” she said in a 1986 interview with the Los Angeles Times, “because I’m here to prove them wrong.”

Indeed, she did. At her best Ms. At Norman commanded the stage with her formidable presence and glorious singing, though she particularly favored mythic roles that lent themselves to her earth-goddess look, like Alceste, Medea, Phaedra, Cassandra and Dido (both in Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” and Berlioz’s “

In truth, Ms. Les Troyens ”). Norman’s decline in the 1990 s may have simply been a normal aging of the instrument. Not all voices, even one as remarkable as Ms. Norman’s, are built to last.

This is a moment to remember her greatness, especially with the right colleagues to inspire the best from her, as James Levine did when she sangSieglinde in Wagner’s “Die Walküre”at the Met and in a 1987 recording. Portraying a miserable young woman trapped in a forced marriage to an abusive bully, Ms. Norman was vocally splendid yet poignantly vulnerable.

In the film version, she looks frightened, full of longing, and yet somehow regal, which is completely right. After all, though Sieglinde is treated like a pathetic nobody, she can’t help thinking that her life so far has been an awful mistake, that she’s actually special. She’s right.