Renee Fleming Quotes & Sayings

Every singer eventually gets around to a Christmas disc. — Renee Fleming

This is often the way we put together our lives, adding the striking qualities of others into our own character. — Renee Fleming

I think touring is hard. — Renee Fleming

For years, I had no time for exploratory travel. — Renee Fleming

The reason that some singers go on to become great artists has very little to do with their voices, but rather with the fact that they have used their instruments as tools for detailed communication. — Renee Fleming

You finally have to learn to pull all the different kinds of teaching and training and coaching together on you own, so that your voice and body and technique for a sound that is consistent and solid. — Renee Fleming

Among the important realizations I had in my own days in the practice room was that if any one route to any one phrase didn't work after days of trying, then the exact opposite route should at least be explored, as well as every alternative in between, as counterintuitive as that often seemed. — Renee Fleming

Music enabled me as a fragile young person to give voice to emotions I could barely name, and how it enables me to give my voice the unique and mysterious power to speak to others. — Renee Fleming

Because everything about the voice interests me, I felt it would be fascinating to learn a completely different style of singing. — Renee Fleming

I'm American. I'm eclectic. I'm going to follow my musical passions. And if people don't like it, and it hurts my legacy, I'm not going to worry about that. — Renee Fleming

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

The more you put into it, the more you and the audience will get out of it. — Renee Fleming

It is always fragile, being a parent. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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

My mother was the worst kind of stage mother. She would make me and my younger sister and brother little duckling costumes and put us in kiddie shows. — Renee Fleming

I haven't really been able to transfer into that extraordinarily other worldly creature, other than I hope on stage. — Renee Fleming

I've always been inspired by artists who have shown musical and intellectual curiosity and the courage to take risks. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

I'm lucky - I can do two things at once. — Renee Fleming

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

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. — Renee Fleming

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

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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

My parents were both high-school music teachers. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

I'm not a reactionary. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

Learning operatic roles is ongoing, and I find that I can learn on the train or subway, during a manicure, getting my hair done, and even while driving if I only look at the score at red lights. — Renee Fleming

I would love to do more private concerts. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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

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

I want to get out of the major opera houses. — Renee Fleming

I'm rarely singing in English. — Renee Fleming

I don't like to sing loud. — Renee Fleming

I cannot imagine a more satisfying calling than my own: beauty, humanity, and history every day, combined with the cathartic joy of singing. — Renee Fleming

In a sense, it's less about seeing how high up I can vault than about seeing how deeply I can explore my potential ... Ambition for me is about the willingness to work, the ability to mine my own soul fearlessly. — Renee Fleming

We sing with the entire body. The sounds that we make emanate not just from the head, but from the whole heart and soul, and, most important, the gut. — Renee Fleming

I enjoy the more floaty, exposed, elegant singing. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

I have not changed with the accomplishments. I've remained the same. If I had changed, great. You know, but I haven't. — Renee Fleming

I'm not exactly an angry young person. — Renee Fleming

I'm reserved, so I've always needed to find a way of opening up. Jazz helped me do that. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

With classical singing you have to put out so much air - you project, you emit force. — Renee Fleming

When a human being without amplification makes a sound that is high and loud, it is almost unworldly. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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

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

Opera is really fun. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

For my own singing, I used to be attracted by the baroque, the flashier the better, but now I prefer a simpler, purer style. — Renee Fleming

My philosophy is that the people around us are there doing as much work if not more work behind the scenes and they're the last people you would ever be unkind to, so I hope I'm not a diva off stage. — Renee Fleming

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

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

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. — Renee Fleming

For a while it was hard for me to say no to work. — Renee Fleming

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

I was constantly being pushed toward a European ideal of what it means to be a classical or opera singer, let's say in the Renata Tebaldi mode. I reject that. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

I was always a very good student. — Renee Fleming

I am so envious of my colleagues from 100 years ago who only sang new works, they hardly ever sang revivals. — Renee Fleming

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. — Renee Fleming

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

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. — Renee Fleming

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

We are unique, each human voice, not because we are completely self-generated, but because of who we choose to assemble the countless factors that made us. — Renee Fleming

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

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

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. — Renee Fleming

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

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. — Renee Fleming

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

An interpretation exists because of what we find between the notes. — Renee Fleming