As I was practicing this evening, there occurred a confluence of events that has cost me not only the remaining hours of today, but also my heart.  (1)Working on some Wagner, wondering what the hell “sehr massig bewegt” really means as a tempo marking, so I decided to see what there was on Youtube.  (2) Scribbled in the margin of my music, the advice of my singing teacher: “Listen to Jessie Norman.”

Turns out I misspelled her name, but I found her anyway.  I hereby declare my rapturous and awestruck utter fangirl love for Jessye Norman.  She was born in Augusta Georgia, September 15, 1945.  She was singing gospel music in her church by age 4, and became an opera fan when she heard a radio broadcast at age 9.  Since then, the list of her accomplishments is an enormous wall of text.  This is a woman whose voice can do basically everything.  She can sing the whole range of female voices, from deep contralto to the top of the dramatic soprano range.  And she can act! and and and  I tell you what, how about I show, rather than tell.  Some of the following videos are long but I promise you, you will not regret the time you spend.

First video:  Here, she’s singing Franz Schubert’s “Erlkönig” in some sort of avant-garde multimedia installation setup.  Watch how she changes into three different characters to tell the story.

Watch here, her transcendent luminescence as she sings the Sanctus from Gounod’s Messe solonelle.

And now watch this.  Yes, seriously, watch both of them.  All twenty minutes, as she performs Brunhilde’s immolation scene at the end of Wagner‘s  Götterdämmerung.  No set.  No props.  No costumes.  No other actors.  Just her in a plain dress and an orchestra. She left me in tears.  Not just leaky eyes, but heaving sobs. 

What’s happening here: a goddess, cursed to love a mortal man, rides her horse into the flames of his funeral pyre, knowing that it will result not only in her death but the end of all the gods.  Whole story here.

I have nothing more to say.