The acceptable behavior is to shut up and listen. Earlier last week, multi-industry heavyweights including Jessye Norman supped in Manhattan's Greenwich Village for ACRIA's 18th annual holiday dinner and fund-raiser.
As a longtime supporter of the AIDS research foundation, Norman spoke to an audience that included fashion and entertainment celebs such as Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Bernadette Peters. Commanding the microphone like Carmen, Norman toasted late ACRIA philanthropist Judith Peabody. From WWD's party reportage:
But when Jessye Norman, regal in an elaborate gown, rose to deliver remarks, one could hear a pin drop. Table conversations stopped, forks went down and the room was still, silenced by the privilege of an audience with the diva.
Norman was paying tribute to the late Judith Peabody and she talked like....this...enunciating...each...word. It left the room hanging on her every turn of phrase as if she were still on an opera stage, one towering grand dame tipping her hat to another.
Diva born and bred.