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American soprano Jessye Norman was one of the most important figures of the 20th and early 21st century opera. In her performances of prominent operatic roles, as well as a celebrated recital and recording career, she was well regarded throughout the world.

Norman was born on September 15, 1945, in Augusta, Georgia. She started singing spirituals at the age of four at Mount Calvary Baptist Church; one Saturday, while doing her chores, she heard an opera for the first time, broadcast on the radio. She became an instant opera fan and started listening to recordings of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price. Nat "King" Cole was also a major inspiration for her. At 16, Norman began studying at Howard University, where her voice teacher was Carolyn Grant. She sang in the university chorus and worked as a soloist at the Lincoln Temple United Church of Christ. In 1965, she won the National Society of Arts and Letters singing competition. She continued her studies at Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and at the University of Michigan, where her most important teachers were Elizabeth Mannion and Pierre Bernac.

In 1968, Norman won the Munich Competition, leading to her operatic debut as Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser in Berlin. A major European operatic career quickly developed: she appeared in Meyerbeer's L'Africaine at Maggio Musicale in Florence in 1971, Verdi's Aïda at La Scala in Milan in 1972, and in Berlioz's Les Troyens at London's Covent Garden the same year. These roles bespeak a major part of Norman's stage persona: a commanding and noble bearing, partly due to her uncommon height and size. However, this was more a function of her unique, rich, and powerful voice. She had an uncommonly wide range, encompassing all female voice registers from contralto to the high dramatic soprano.

As her operatic career developed, Norman also made important recital debuts, including London and New York in 1973. She made an extensive North American concert debut in 1976 and 1977 but did not appear in opera in the U.S. until 1982. This was with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, in a double bill as Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Queen Jocasta in Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. Her Metropolitan Opera debut was as Cassandra in 1983, the opening night of the Met's centennial season.

Her interpretation of Strauss' Four Last Songs was legendary. Its slowness was controversial, but the tonal qualities of her voice were ideal for these final works of the great Romantic German lieder tradition. She also sang Schoenberg's Gurrelieder and his opera Erwartung; she sang this on a memorable double bill at the Met with Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, which was broadcast nationally. She appeared on live broadcasts of season-opening concerts of the New York Philharmonic.

Norman was acclaimed in her singing of Mussorgsky songs in the original Russian, the German Romantic lieder repertoire, and French music from Berlioz to contemporary composers. Another major part of her musical life was in the performance of American music. These included jazz standards, the sacred music of Duke Ellington, African American spirituals, and woman.life.song., a song cycle composed by Judith Weir, commissioned for Norman by Carnegie Hall.

Throughout her life, Norman was asked to perform in many important ceremonies in the U.S. and abroad. These include singing the French national anthem for the 200th anniversary of the French revolution, the funeral of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the opening ceremony of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, and singing America, the Beautiful at the dedication of the memorial columns of light at the site of the World Trade Center in New York.

Norman had an extensive and successful recording career, mainly recording on the Philips label. She released albums of opera, recital, jazz, and Christmas music. She won five Grammy awards, including the "Grammy for Lifetime Achievement" in 2006.

Jessye Norman died in New York on September 30, 2019, following complications from a spinal cord injury suffered in 2015. ~ Joseph Stevenson & Keith Finke

Even though he spent much of his career behind the Iron Curtain in Communist East Germany, conductor Kurt Masur was one of the most respected conductors of the 20th century and was recognized internationally. The longtime conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, he conducted the New York Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic in later life and was acclaimed for his work with both. Masur's recording catalog is vast, and his performances began to appear in the West even before German reunification. His recordings continued to appear in reissues well after his death; a 1971 recording of Mendelssohn's 12 Jugendsinfonien was issued by the Berlin Classics label in 2023.

Masur was born on July 18, 1927, in Brieg in the German province of Lower Silesia (now Brzeg, Poland). Masur's father was an electrical engineer, and Masur completed an engineer's apprenticeship and went to work for his father. However, he also loved music and took piano lessons as a teen from Katharina Hartmann, and studied piano and cello at the University of Breslau (now the University of Wrocław, Poland). Masur was active as a paratrooper with the German army during World War II, and of his 150-man unit, only 27 survived. After the war, he enrolled at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Leipzig, remaining there for several years but dropping out at 21 when he got a job as a répétiteur (rehearsal coach) at what is now the Halle Opera House. Masur's rise through the conducting ranks in the 1950s followed the old Kapellmeister model at first; he held that position with the Stadttheater Erfurt from 1951 to 1953 and then the same post with the Leipzig Opera Theater from 1953 to 1955. In 1955, he became the conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic; he returned to operatic posts at the State Theater of Mecklenburg and then the Komische Oper Berlin before returning to the Dresden Philharmonic from 1967 to 1972.

In 1970, Masur assumed the position for which he would become best known, that of Gewandhauskapellmeister of Leipzig, or conductor and artistic director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. This was the most prestigious ensemble in the former East Germany, with a long history dating back to its founder and first conductor, Felix Mendelssohn. Masur remained the orchestra's conductor until 1991, making many recordings with the group; an early one, issued in 1974, featured Mendelssohn's cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60. Some of Masur's albums were issued only in the Communist world, but as his popularity grew, he was allowed to perform in the West, and his albums were sold there. He conducted the Cleveland Orchestra in 1974 and took the Gewandhaus Orchestra on a U.S. tour that year. In 1981, he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic. In the last days of East Germany's Communist regime, Masur was widely noted for his activities in support of human rights.

In 1991, he was named music director of the New York Philharmonic, succeeding the modernist Pierre Boulez and the experimentally oriented Zubin Mehta. Masur, with a focus on middle-of-the-road German and Russian repertory, was credited with sharpening the orchestra's sound over his 11 years at the helm. In 1991 alone, he released ten albums, many of them on the Teldec label; some featured the Gewandhaus Orchestra and others the New York Philharmonic. Masur held positions as music director of the London Philharmonic from 2000 to 2007 and of the Orchestre National de France from 2002 to 2008. He maintained a busy schedule of guest appearances but revealed in 2012 that he was suffering from Parkinson's disease. Masur died on December 19, 2015, in Greenwich, Connecticut. His recording catalog, with Beethoven the most common composer but also including such novelties as a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, numbered some 300 releases; by the mid-2020s, the flow of reissues of his music had hardly slowed. Masur was honored with a "Google Doodle" on the anniversary of his birth in 2018. ~ James Manheim