For this diva, spirit is in full flower

Jessye Norman is back in the news, though for reasons best appreciated by opera buffs who love the latest bit of behind-the-scenes gossip.

The diva’s recital at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Saturday night came in the wake of a report that she had just pulled out of Michigan Opera Theatre’s world premiere production of “Margaret Garner” in May, a new opera by composer Richard Danielpour and author Toni Morrison. The official explanation was “personal reasons,” but a Detroit Free Press interview with the Michigan company’s chief, David DiChiera, indicated that she might have been dissatisfied with the stage direction, costume design and other production elements.

Be that as it may, Norman went through with her plans to include in her UCLA recital a separate song cycle, “Spirits in the Wall,” written for her by Danielpour and Morrison a few years ago. It’s a strange, darkish sequence of four songs, with the sustained, melodically unremarkable vocal line at odds with the busy, sometimes choppy piano part. When Norman sang the downcast lines, “There are no new songs / And I have sung all the songs there are,” one could take it literally -- the composer running on fumes.

Renowned for her regal solo entrances and exits, gown billowing in her wake, Norman leaned on the arm of her pianist, Mark Markham, as she made her way to and from the stage. Her voice retains its power and amplitude, cutting easily through the stormiest piano accompaniments. Although, at first, it resonated in full cry with an almost metallic sheen in the Royce acoustics, her timbre regained most of its richness in the second half of the evening.

The rest of the program surveyed mostly familiar Norman territory -- a sequence of four Richard Strauss lieder crowned by a heroic, large-scaled “Cacilie,” a trilogy of Poulenc songs in which Norman swooned almost satirically through the Strauss-like waltz in “Les Chemins de l’Amour,” the concluding round of spirituals at mostly deliberate tempos. Most arresting of all was her highly dramatic rendition of Ravel’s unusual “Two Hebraic Songs,” reaching deep into her rich alto range.