Jessye Norman must be one of the most famous and popular opera singers in the world. She certainly has star quality - a very rich, powerful voice and an unforgettably imposing stage presence.

I'm not sure that she has always chosen the best roles for her voice. Take her Wagner roles for instance: she has sung Elisabeth, Sieglinde and Elsa, recording the latter two roles (Sieglinde twice, plus on video). I enjoy her recordings of these roles, but can't help feeling she would have been much better-suited to other roles. Her voice is quite dark in quality with a large range (she has sung the mezzo part in Beethoven's Missa solemnis and Verdi's Requiem) - credentials ideally suited to Venus and Ortrud. Moreover, both these characters require a larger-than-life quality, and that Jessye Norman most definitely has. Elisabeth and Elsa, on the other hand, are both frankly on the wet side, especially Elsa who has the added bonus of being stupid. I find it quite hard to imagine how any but the most fearsome Ortrud could come up against Jessye Norman's Elsa and survive the experience.

Norman has sung other roles which have been more wisely chosen: Cassandre and Didon in Les Troyens, Countess Almaviva, Ariadne, Kundry and Jocasta for example. She has avoided other roles that people would very much like to have heard her sing, such as Isolde and Brünhilde, but perhaps she is right to have done so - she has, until quite recently, kept her voice in extremely good condition.