Mighty lioness

Jessye Norman’s singing career alone would be enough to guarantee her a place in the pantheon of great singers – the breadth of her opera roles, her Strauss Four Last Songs, her Wagner Wesendonck Lieder… But she was so much more, including a supporter of young talent and a formidable champion of her fellow black artists. When she died in September 2019, the tributes and obituaries in publications and on websites across the world proved all this in abundance, and two notable celebrations of her life took place – in her hometown of Augusta, Georgia, her death prompted four days of mourning, while a month later, a special, star-studded memorial tribute at New York’s Metropolitan Opera featured sopranos Lise Davidsen and Renée Fleming and bass-baritone Eric Owens, who bade her farewell with a performance from Wagner’s Ring cycle.

NORMAN WAS BORN IN 1945 and grew up in Augusta, Georgia. As a result of redlining, the illegal and discriminatory practice across the US that drew red lines around portions of a map to deny mortgage loans, insurance and other financial services to black families, racially integrated neighbourhoods were almost unheard of before the Civil Rights movement took off in the 1950s. But an under-acknowledged by-product of segregation and the Jim Crow South was that there were many strong networks of black communities.

The Norman family was part of one such community: her father Silas was an