The saga began a little over a month ago, when my friend Marshall read someplace – and told me – that the legendary singer Jessye Norman had signed copies of her memoir at the Metropolitan Opera Gift Shop on May 9th.
Her memoir?!?
I had absolutely no idea that such a book existed. I had not seen any mention of it in Opera News magazine or in any of the other classical music periodicals that I look at on a fairly regular basis. This was exciting news, and I found myself salivating at the possibility – however remote – of doing an interview with Miss Norman, perhaps the most globally admired and recognized classical singer in the last fifty years. (She sang for two presidential inaugurations, a Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, the 50th anniversary of the state of Israel, opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s centennial season, the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympics, the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, the funeral of Jackie Kennedy – just to name a few. Arguably, no singer of our time has been a part of so many important moments in our recent history, aside from performing on nearly every major opera and concert stage around the world.)
A quick visit to Amazon yielded me the title of the book – Stand Up Straight and Sing! – and its publisher – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – and three clicks later, I had the name and email address of the person in charge of media relations and sent her an email, hoping that my request wouldn’t be swallowed up in cyber oblivion. To my immense relief, a reply came from her that very same day, saying that she had forwarded my request to one of her associates.
At that point, I did a lot of waiting- and when I first sat down and wrote about this, I described waiting 7 days for the first response, 10 days for the next response, and so so- until I realized that there was no mathematical way for me to have waited as long as I described! So I went back to the emails in question and discovered- much to my chagrin- that the waiting that had seemed so endless and excessive at the time wasn’t actually so bad. What I had thought was a full week of waiting was actually 3 days ….. what felt like a week and a half was actually 4 days …. and so on. I suppose the reason the waiting was so tortuous and felt so interminable was because I was so incredibly anxious for this interview to take place- and I tended to treat every pause in the process as a sign that this was all going to come to naught. In fact, my initial email to the publisher was on June 2nd . . . and just 11 days and 7 emails later, I was speaking to Jessye Norman herself!
Actually, I should mention one major hitch. June 10th was the day I got the email from the publicist at the publisher, saying “Miss Norman, as she prefers to be called, said that she can do this Friday the 13th at 3 pm eastern. At what number can she call you?” Thrilled out of my mind, I went to Facebook to share the thrilling news. (Me and my big mouth.) The very next day, came this email: “Greg, I was just informed that she needs to postpone this. No new date offered. I am so sorry.” Excitement turned to ashes, just like that, and I found myself adding the name of Jessye Norman to the list of my most frustrating “Almost Interviews” – singer Amy Grant, and figure skaters Kristie Yamaguchi and Paul Wylie. But the next afternoon (the 12th) came a text from my boss at the radio station, saying that he had taken a phone call from Miss Norman’s manager, who wanted me to call her! At the time, I was on an Uncle/Niece date with Lorelai to help her celebrate her last day of third grade, enjoying a treat at the old fashioned soda fountain at Andrea’s. Barely containing my glee, I turned to Lorelai and told her that I needed to make a phone call because of “a really, really important opera thing” – an oxymoron in her mind, I’m sure, but she very generously said it was fine if I made the call. As it turns out, the hitch had been that Miss Norman prefers to have a list of questions before she does interviews, so she can be thoroughly prepared. I said I was happy to oblige her, and I must admit that for the rest of my “date” with Lorelai and through a voice lesson I taught right afterwards, at least three quarters of my mind was busy formulating questions for one of the most renowned singers of our time.
As it turns out, assembling that list of questions was much more challenging than I expected it to be. Coming up with questions was easy, but I didn’t want her overwhelmed with what would appear to be an exhausting three hour interview. I wanted the questions to be beyond the predictable and pedestrian, but not so odd that they would throw her for a loop or seem bizarre in any way. And there were a few things not mentioned in her book that I was mightily tempted to ask her about, such as: what’s the real story behind the incident aboard a commercial plane which resulted in you being asked to leave the aircraft when it next landed, forcing you to make other plans for the rest of your trip? What about your last production at the Metropolitan Opera, in which its opening night performance was cut short when one of your cast mates suffered a heart attack and suffered a fatal fall in full view of the audience? Why have you not sung at the Met since 1996? Did they stop asking, or did you stop saying yes? And as a woman of physically grand proportions, do you still feel welcome and valued on the opera stages of the world in an age when directors seem obsessed with hiring singers who could be on the cover of Vogue? All perfectly legitimate questions. I suppose I could have proposed any of these questions with the understanding that they could be nixed, but I feared that she might end up nixing the whole interview instead! So I went with a long list of questions that played it somewhat safe … closely tied to the memoir … with the biggest emphasis on the element of the book closest to her heart: her family in Augusta, Georgia that gave her life and helped make her who she is.
Well, I must have done something right – because that very evening (in fact, less than two hours after I had sent the list of questions off) I received an email from Miss Norman’s manager with these wonderful words: “Miss Norman would like to proceed with our original appointment.” And at 2:05 my time on Friday the 13th – a most lucky day for me, as it turns out- the phone rang and on the other end of the line was the unmistakable voice of Jessye Norman herself. And she proved to be a perfectly lovely guest in every way – bigger than life in some ways, yet unexpectedly warm, approachable and fun. And I got to ask her almost every single question I had sent her (plus several follow ups which I hadn’t). I suppose I could have asked her if she had any sort of time limit – or asked her what time her next obligation was – but I was afraid she would say “how about fifteen minutes?” So I just launched in and hoped that she would just let it ride. And she did! And an hour and 16 minutes later, I said goodbye- feeling so grateful that this dream of speaking with this incredible singer had come true. Before this, I had recorded interviews with Eileen Farrell, Shirley Verrett, Dimitri Hvorostovsky, Nathan Gunn, Deborah Voigt …. but this felt like the biggest and best of them all, at least in part because it had not just fallen into my lap. I worked hard for this one- and yet in the end it felt like a perfectly lovely gift from the legendary Jessye Norman.
P.S.- The interview is tentatively scheduled to air on July 2nd and 3rd, pending approval from Miss Norman.