Renee Fleming Quotes

Contrary to the norm, as my technique improved my voice became higher.

My worry is that opera will become an historic art form as opposed to a living, breathing thing.

If I have to hold a note for a long time, I imagine it as moving and spinning, for the note has to have life. In a way, a singer actually refreshes a note with every beat that it's held.

In a way, being an opera singer is like being a very romantic sixteen-year-old who falls in love with great passion and conviction every month.

I think singing it when it's done well is extremely natural. It feels great.

Americans who want to perform in Europe face a cultural and vocal uphill battle. We're considered good students, very professional and often technically sound; but though there are droves of us to choose from, a European singer is almost always going to be the first choice of a European company - and often, of an American company as well.

I have had a very difficult time with stage fright; it undermines your well-being and peace of mind, and it can also threaten your livelihood.

Every singer eventually gets around to a Christmas disc.

I think singing is one of the most natural things that human beings do, but it's difficult.

Fostering creativity in children is as important as any other part of the school curriculum because it feeds the soul. A daily dose of creativity helps children imagine a better world and then create it.

I think opera has gained a kind of glamorous appeal. It's a live performance that aligns all of the arts, and when it is represented in the media, in film in particular, it is presented as something that is really a special event, whether it's a great date or something that's just hugely romantic.

One of my timesaving habits is to save all of my magazines and junk mail for airplane trips. I walk on the plane with a very heavy bundle, but by the time the trip is over, it can all be thrown away.

Some of my first teachers were incredibly tough. You could never sing more than three words without being stopped and having to do it over 20 times. I loved that - that sort of process of dissecting and trying to figure out and master this incredibly mysterious instrument.

I would love to do more private concerts.

I have a certain image that's more classic, and I'm happy to stay out of the fray.

For years, I had no time for exploratory travel.

I learned so many roles so quickly as a young singer, I thought it was time to come back to them and make them better - deeper, more nuanced.

I listen to archival and historic recordings. I love watching singers. I learned a lot from watching videos.

My whole career I played these girls sort of 18 to 23.

Well, any time I'm preparing for a performance or even a rehearsal, it's as if in a way, like any other athletes, these are muscles that support the vocal cords which are just I believe cartilage. It demands a kind of constant warming up and a constant feeling of where is the voice today.

Being steeped in the process of learning and exploring keeps me from becoming too nervous. Partly it's about not getting bored.

While it's a fact that a voice begins with natural talent, any talent must be nurtured, cajoled, wrestled with pampered, challenged, and, at every turn, examined.

At this stage in my career, I don't have to take any big risks. You want to take a calculated risk, not one that leads to people saying 'yes, but there was that one time when she made that big mistake.' It's always a shame when that happens, especially if you've gotten by for decades without anything hugely tragic.

I do everything in the third person. Performance is about being someone else.

I don't want to record anything unless it can be great and genuinely interesting.

When I sing, the sound is a totally different range, color, all of it. It's all about the breath. You take in a breath and you make a sound.

Someone once said that there are probably seven naturally good singing days in a year-and those are days you won't be booked. What we must learn is how to sing through all the other days.

I want to get out of the major opera houses.

My parents were both high-school music teachers.

I was always a very good student.

I want to keep my voice young, with nothing heavy.

Very few opera singers in history have been able to cross into popular music.

No voice teacher can be all things to all people. You have to gain information from whatever sources you can. You have to listen.

He also gave me some advice that I follow to this day: Sing in the mirror. If it looks funny, it's wrong.

I'm not exactly an angry young person.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

Everybody's a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. I mean, I've never arrived ... I'm still learning all the time.

I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate, very simple and emotional, about that music.

It is always fragile, being a parent.

I've lived in New York all my life, and we went to the Mormon Pageant each year in upstate New York. It still is a wonderful production. I remember going and seeing the performance and listening to the music. My father had Mormon Tabernacle Choir music, and we would listen to it and sing with it.

Classical wasn't my only interest in those days. Potsdam was the place where I fell in love with jazz, a love that, for a while at least, I thought would be my life.

It's funny, I've decided 'Hallelujah' is a kind of Rorschach test for people, because everyone has a different reaction to it and to what I'm doing. I just sang it, and whatever came out was just natural and spontaneous and maybe that's the best thing, because there's a kind of enigma, both in the meaning of the words and the way Leonard Cohen said them, that catches people's attention.

Pulled out my Valery Gergiev trump card and said I would have to call him about getting another hotel. There are many ways in which a soprano relies upon the guidance of a conductor, and not all of them are confined to the stage. As a result of dropping the most powerful name in Russian music today, I got a window and a view.

I'm not a reactionary.

The student's job is to stay open-minded, to quell the knee-jerk defensiveness we all possess in the face of suggestions for improvement, and to maintain patience when faced with a process that is often slow, confusing, and frustrating.

Opera is really fun.

A lot of performers don't want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don't sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.

Perfection often creates such a flawless surface that there's no place for the audience to enter into a piece, while the idiosyncrasies of individual style are like windows into the singer's heart.

I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.

My parents discussed singing every night over the dinner table; I had a tremendous music education.

There's no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I'm performing.

So much can be gained from watching other singers, seeing what they do and what they don't do, seeing how they look when they breathe, how wide they open their mouths for a high note.

I'm rarely singing in English.

I have a noble history of being rejected by a lot of places, only to discover that the one that finally lets me in is in fact the perfect fit.

It is our responsibility to learn how to speak to an audience that is less informed about music, to give it a reason to want to come and see us instead of going to the movies.

Music was language in our house. It was air ... I feel certain that if I absorbed any lessons at all in the first months and years of my life, they must have been about the work that went into making a beautiful sound.

A lot of bad behavior in singers is caused by nerves.

Having to travel so much plays havoc with your personal life.

I enjoy the more floaty, exposed, elegant singing.

Singers can also get away with a lot based on youth, strength and enthusiasm, only to find ten years later that what was once just a niggling problem has brought their careers to an end.

One major study observed that in recent years, we have done a magnificent job of turning out fabulously trained performers with no place to play. More encouraging news is that employment options and a real strategy for developing the arts are becoming part of many conservatory curricula.