The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer

by Renee Fleming

  When I’m touring, giving recitals, the performing context changes every night: the city, the hall, the audience, the piano. How I feel, how I slept, how much time there was to rehearse, the orchestra, the conductor, everything figures into how the evening will go. In recitals my singing is affected by whether the lid on the piano is up or down. Sometimes I’m working with a piano that sounds too percussive, which will in turn make me push my voice ever so slightly. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to diagnose the problem quickly, and we’ll find a different tone quality for that particular instrument in that particular theater. The acoustics in an empty hall vary greatly from those in a packed hall. Even after all these years I can be fooled into thinking I’m having a bad night when in fact it’s that the acoustic of the theater has deadened with the presence of an audience. On sometimes the acoustic is too live, which can cause me to sing in a strangely high-resonance position, and that’s even worse than an acoustic that’s too dead. A very bright, live acoustic sounds harsh after a while, and I find myself getting tense. The second that something doesn’t feel or sound right, I start down my mental checklist: Am I feeling okay? Is the air-conditioning too high? Is it blowing on my face and drying out my throat? Am I pushing, and if so, why? Is a muscle tightening somewhere?

  Along with all the external conditions, I have to account for whatever subtle changes in my voice require tweaking and readjusting. I have to factor in fatigue, tension, and any bad habits that can creep into my voice in one night, on one note. If I’m very lucky, I have the time to warm up slowly and go over whatever moments I thought were weak the night before. Most often I’ll come up with strategies for dealing with the problem. It’s as if my voice were a bubble of air inside a level, and I have to constantly tap on one end (the bubble shoots too far to the right) and then the other (I’ve overcompensated and sent the bubble too far to the left), trying to find the balance, the target spot at dead center.

  As an example of the type of maintenance I now need, during a recent concert in Germany, I ran into trouble with two high B-naturals while singing an aria from Manon. Out of the blue they had left their normal track and somehow slipped into pure head voice. The next night I had to pull them back down in order to balance them between mouth and head resonance. Since high notes have always been a bit unsure for me, I have to be extremely vigilant to keep the fear factor from creeping into my singing, even now. Once I become overly aware of a note and the ways in which it might fail me, chances are it will fail. If a pitch has gone off one night, I’ll tense up when I have to sing it the next, no matter what my strategy is, so unfortunately I have to deal with that as well. In this particular case, I managed to figure out what I had done the night before to get them in the wrong place, which was a tiny adjustment in my head position. In my dressing room, I caught myself still doing it unconsciously, by singing the phrase into the mirror, just the way Ubaldo Gardini had suggested all those years ago when I first sang Musetta. When I turned away from the mirror and sang the same phrase again, I felt my chin go up slightly and thought, There it is. I had probably been too aware of the lighting the night before and had lifted my chin half an inch too high. It’s this constant reworking of technique every day that fosters longevity.

  Once I identified the solution to the problem, I created a strategy to use it. When I got to the first B-natural, I tried to keep the back of my neck open and released the note without lifting my chin. I also had to release my breath and not tense up at the same time. The task I gave myself for that performance was to sing an umlaut on the lower preceding pitch with very little breath pressure just before connecting to the troubled B, and then open it up horizontally as I went up, while still not adding any breath pressure. I practiced that a few times, because muscle memory is a key aspect of singing. When I stepped out onto the stage, part of me really didn’t believe I was going to be able to reproduce what I had managed in the dressing room, because I still worried about becoming tense, and the slightest bit of tension would send the note shooting straight back up into my head voice. But in the end the strategy worked beautifully, and I was gratified that my solid training had enabled me to figure out a way to fix a problem that I hadn’t been able to solve before. The rest of the performance was a complete joy, because I could then concentrate on the business of expression. I was the only one who was aware that I had had something to worry about, and with any luck, that will continue to be the case for a few years to come.

  Of course singing isn’t the only thing that concerns me when I’m onstage. I’m also thinking about acting, my physical presentation, the meaning of the text, my pronunciation and diction, and the audience. Because I’m not an extrovert by nature, it helps me tremendously to receive from the audience as well as give to them. Sometimes their love is abundantly evident, while during other performances I feel as if they are the judge and I’m the defendant. I can practically see them out there with their scorecards, noting every tiny flaw.

  I constantly have to remind myself that the audience is, on the whole, a benevolent group, especially when I’m singing a demanding program. Likewise, I don’t ever go to Carnegie Hall to hear a recital in hopes that I’ll have the opportunity to be critical. Most of us attend concerts or operas hoping that the experience will be a positive one, even a transformative one. When I perform I always try to seek out at least one person in the audience who looks engaged, who is smiling—in much the same way that Edith Wiens connected to me at her War Requiem rehearsal. On the nights I scan the hall and can’t find anyone to sing to, my heart sinks into my shoes. When that happens, it’s always in a recital or a concert, because the lights are less blinding, there is no orchestra pit to see over, and the house is smaller and more intimate—all of which bring me much closer to the audience. I tend to avoid very small halls now, because early in my career, I sometimes became intimidated by a cultivated audience whose members seemed to sit back, fold their arms, and say, “Show us.” As the person up on the stage, I need a vote of confidence—at least a little smile or look of engagement. During one winter concert, I bemusedly watched as nearly one-quarter of the house began falling asleep. I didn’t think the performance was quite that dull.

  There are also times when I completely misjudge an audience. They can seem brutally serious while I am singing, only to applaud rapturously at the end. Occasionally the audience members are so intent that I mistake their focus for criticism, but then I’m pleasantly surprised to find out they’ve enjoyed themselves. Experience has taught me to be more open-minded, because it’s often happened that what I have feared to be the most excruciating performances have reaped the most gratifying results.

  The truth is, I think most of us who perform do it for the applause, for what we get back. We have a great need to be loved, and preferably by a huge group of people simultaneously. There are, of course, a few performers for whom the audience is completely superfluous, and making music—and, as an aside, earning a living—is their only concern. I’m not as pure as that. I want and need the love and validation. I wasn’t a natural performer, but I was a natural student, and I think I took my student need for straight A’s and transferred that over to the audience.

  Singers have a long and complicated relationship with applause. Taking a bow is certainly part of any performance, and one that I’m not always comfortable with. In a way it is a seduction. It’s very interesting to observe different singers’ styles. I’ve read long, elaborate descriptions of how famous singers took their bows, of how some great sopranos used only the simplest gesture to bring an end to the evening, while others went for a bow that was grander and more artful than the entire performance that came before it. Sometimes a bow has more of an effect on the audience than the music itself. Picture the singer who grasps the curtain with both hands and drags herself to peer around its edge, as if this required a supreme effort after enduring the emotional upheaval the performance cost her. It seems too much to even attempt to step onstage again, and she looks as if she is j
ust about to faint from exhaustion . . . until she suddenly becomes aware of the audience. She hears them cheering for her. Her eyes grow wide with astonishment, and with a single, questioning gesture, she lightly touches her heart. “Me?” she seems to say. “All this love is for me?” And at that point, of course, the audience members are driven mad by their desire to scream, “Yes, you!” They thunder their approval, their shouts of “Brava!” echoing through the night. They will leave the theater convinced that they have never been so moved in their entire lives—not completely realizing that it was as much the bowing as the singing that had enticed them into surrendering their hearts.

  There are other ways to connect to an audience. I’ll often sign CDs after a performance, which gives me a chance to make face-to-face contact with the people for whom I’ve just been performing. Audience members have the opportunity to tell me their stories, that they found comfort in my music when suffering the loss of a family member or throughout a difficult illness—or sometimes it enhanced a joyful event, such as a wedding or the bonding of a relationship. It is an extraordinary privilege to know that people who love music turn to me in the most important moments of their lives. When I’m close to an audience, I feel as if I am completely open to them, and in turn, they can see me for who I really am. With my heart and soul expressed through my voice and the music, all else fades away.

  There are two primary ways that the audience tends to perceive a soprano onstage. There’s the group that wants to put her up on a pedestal, that regards her as a sort of gift from God on high, come to earth to bless the masses with her golden tones. The other group, which I think of as the larger public, views a soprano, if not as the girl next door, then certainly as a real person. This is the image most people have of me—off the pedestal and down to earth. I often think about who it is I’m trying to be for the public. Do I want to be imperious, difficult, temperamental? Do I want to take physical stances that are grand? Do I want to be warm and gracious? Do I want to be loving, sexy, giving? I’m sometimes aware of my own role in how I am perceived, and while my presentation depends on the piece I’m singing, a choice must always be made.

  I believe that the ultimate goal of an opera singer is to create a legacy. In the case of Maria Callas, her legend has remained strong and vibrant after the success she achieved in her lifetime, and that was already tremendous. Her singing could often be uneven, and her voice was not universally considered beautiful. Some have said that it wasn’t even particularly large, but as a consummate musician she used it effectively to place her own personal stamp on everything she sang. Once, when I was in Paris, I asked Michel Glotz about Callas’s acting. He had been her manager, and they were close friends. What made her so unforgettable onstage? So little videotape of her exists. Did she chew the scenery? Was she given to pounding the floor? What was it about her that captured the imagination of so many opera lovers? What he told me was quite to the contrary of what I had assumed. He said that she did almost nothing. Onstage, she was still, and therefore any movement or vocal gesture had enormous impact. For that reason, people couldn’t take their eyes off her. She seized the focus from the blur of the activity around her. For me, in purely vocal terms, it was the sound of sadness in her voice that was most moving—something in its chiaroscuro sound is like a knife in my heart. It’s impossible to know if that was the sound her voice was naturally imbued with, or if it was the heartbreak in her life that colored it so. She set the current standard for what a great singing actress could be. Callas also didn’t perform very often, which generated its own kind of frenzy, with fans running after her car, forcing her to escape through tunnels beneath opera houses after performances. The myth of Callas has so overshadowed the life of the real woman that it’s difficult to be objective about her. While she often engenders opinions that are either too worshipful or too critical, in the end she had what any singer longs for: her own distinctive, irreplaceable spot in history.

  When I first started singing, it was sometimes said that our particular era was completely bereft of great singers. Everyone talked wistfully about the 1950s, or those who were extremely knowledgeable about historical recordings mooned over singers in the first half of the twentieth century. Real aficionados looked to an even earlier Golden Age and tried to imagine through letters and descriptions just how the originators of our favorite repertoire sounded before recording began.

  In truth, it’s the importance of the music itself, and of the work of the composer, that is the creative gift, while the role of the singer is relegated to that of l’umile ancella, the humble handmaid. From that perspective, singers are not artists themselves but merely interpreters of art. A few, however, can transcend craft and the efficient employment of a natural skill by honing that skill to the highest level. 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. They further take advantage of every aspect of their talents, including their talent for living, to capture the audience’s imagination. 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. Part of why we watch these performers with such passionate intensity is the same reason we can’t tear our eyes away from the girl on the high wire or the man with his head in the lion’s mouth: the thrill that comes from witnessing someone taking chances.

  There are nights when I perform a recital and everything has gone perfectly. I feel that I’ve sung my best and have been able to make the leap from interpretation to artistry. I’ve made a real connection to the audience. I look back on the entire evening and wouldn’t change a thing. And yet those can be the very nights when I go back to my hotel and feel disoriented, for the juxtaposition is just too great. For the most part, I enjoy the time I spend on the road, as it gives me an opportunity to be on my own. The phone doesn’t ring nearly as much as when I’m at home, and I’m not in the middle of the chaos of my regular life. Even though I thrive on chaos, everyone needs a respite from time to time. Still, after communicating so intensely with twelve hundred people, it feels strange to be alone in an unfamiliar room. I’m wide awake, wound up after the performance, and what I feel is an incredible void. Many concert performers have spoken about the loneliness of their lifestyle, and this is generally a very true observation. There’s an enormous thrill that comes from a night onstage, when the hard work that goes into making a great performance comes into contact with the excitement and energy of the audience. But when I get back to the hotel there’s no way to hold on to that elation. It’s as if the whole evening has been erased with the single turn of the key in the lock on the hotel room door, and suddenly I can be negative and judgmental about the smallest error I might have made. By the next morning I’m usually fine, because I understand that this is part and parcel of the nomadic life that singers lead.

  Opera’s built-in social life makes for a less lonely existence. We are reunited with an ensemble of singer friends and familiar faces backstage at least every few years, creating a family of sorts for the month or two that we’re working together. There’s an inherent excitement in the adventure of it all, but underlying it is the constant desire for a connection to home and family. This is the supreme sacrifice we make in exchange for practicing this glorious art form. As a wise colleague once said to me, “What we do is so joyous, so satisfying, we would do it for free. We are actually paid for the grief of leaving our families and friends.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ROLES

  ONE OF THE OBSTACLES I face in learning any new role is finding a way to carve two hours each day out of the middle of a packed schedule to find time to practice. Rehearsing at the piano in my living room makes me grateful that I have developed such good concentration skills over the years, as the phone rings every two minutes and the doorbell only a little less often. My assistant M
ary Camilleri tries her best not to interrupt, but every now and then something comes up that requires my immediate attention. While she juggles three phone lines she is also digging up copies of musical scores I need to look at and packing for my next trip to Germany. My other assistant, Alison Heather, is my liaison to the world, creating travel itineraries and putting together my schedule, trying to finesse the details of where I’ll be singing and when, and arranging interviews, fittings, lunches with friends, practices, school plays, meetings at the Met, and the occasional date. My assistants have referred to me as anything from “the velvet whip” to simply “the hurricane,” though if I didn’t become so harried, I’d say that the overwhelming necessity for multitasking puts me more in the category of “Stepford diva.” When my daughters come home from school, they swoop past the piano for a quick kiss and report on their day, covering everything from grades on pop quizzes to playdate and party invitations, to general gossip about who sat next to whom at lunch and what was said. It’s the highlight of my day. After we catch up, they have a snack and head to their rooms to start their homework. Right now, I’m rehearsing Daphne while also living through a complete renovation of my apartment, so not only is there a great deal of dust to contend with—not the best environment for singing—but constant banging, guys in baseball caps trudging in and out, and a lot of yelling in Russian, which makes me wish I’d been putting in a new kitchen while I was learning Tatyana. Meanwhile, the girls’ nanny is doing the laundry, and Rosie, my Cavalier King Charles spaniel, is barking manically at the two designers who have just shown up to take measurements for the built-in shelves I’m having installed. This chaos is not the exception but the rule. After the kitchen is done, there will be something else to take its place. If I were a delicate person who needed quiet and concentration in order to work, I would be doomed to spend the rest of my life singing the Countess in Figaro, because there would never be an opportunity to learn a new role. My world is thrilling, rewarding, demanding, and almost never peaceful. When the work needs to be done, I simply need to find a way to do it, regardless of what is going on around me, and I probably wouldn’t have it any other way.