The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer

by Renee Fleming

  Although I’ve always taken great pleasure in working with the different elements that go into making an operatic character, from the music to the costumes, the most gratifying aspect of developing a character is the moment of discovery. Just when I think I really know the woman I am singing, something will happen that reveals another facet of her personality. Call it divine inspiration or the exercising of a creative muscle, but whenever I suddenly see a novel way to react to dialogue or a different movement or an unsuspected motivation, I feel newly alive in the role. It can happen during a rehearsal or a performance, or it can be a layered experience that extends and grows across several productions, but the building process never ends. What makes it so exciting is that the combined effort of reading the original book or play on which a libretto is based, studying the period and historical context, and, most important, immersion in the text and music itself creates a completely whole and complicated person on the stage. The more you put into it, the more you and the audience will get out of it.

  Fantastical characters, such as the water nymph Rusalka or the sorceress Alcina, are generally difficult to flesh out, since the essence of what they need or want must be uncovered and imbued with nuance. Performing Alcina for the first time seemed like a series of variations on “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” (Ruggiero) and fifty ways—or, more specifically, five fiendishly difficult arias—to express the loss of love (Alcina). By today’s standards, the sketchy, convoluted, or downright absurd stories on which some baroque and nineteenth-century Italian operas are based require the most imagination in staging and benefit from a director who can work conceptually. Some heroines are also virtuous to a fault, perched on an imaginary pedestal for all time. Contrarily, complex characters with real human lives, such as the Marschallin or Manon or Violetta, are the easiest and, for me, usually the most satisfying to bring to life.

  I remember that the first time I saw a production of Otello, I couldn’t help thinking that Desdemona had been the victim of a childhood lobotomy. What other explanation could there be for her utter obliviousness to her husband’s jealous rages and to the real motivation for his line of questioning about the nature of her virtue? But while preparing the role, I came to see her as a true innocent: she believes so completely in the love she shares with Otello that she can’t conceive of anything coming between them. That realization enabled me to play her with enormous love and confidence. Our director in Chicago, Sir Peter Hall, took her confidence in her marriage a step further, having Otello implicitly assign her to the role of the one and only calming influence on him. She then interprets his rage against her as a sign of anxiety, needing only to be soothed with loving words. She realizes too late the seriousness of his accusations. Every time I sing the role now, I look to find even more goodness and trust in her, and in doing so I hope that my portrayal helps to explain to the audience the depth of her nature.

  Singing Dvořák’s Rusalka is the equivalent of a sensuous moonlight swim, but bringing the character and the story to life is a challenge. The ending of this opera, particularly, took me a great deal of time and discussion to understand. What happens to her? Or to the prince, for that matter? Add to that a second act in which the protagonist is mostly mute, necessitating that Rusalka express everything she is experiencing with her face and body alone, and I can honestly say that I needed all seven productions in which I have performed in to get to the heart of this role. Robert Carsen, the director of the Paris Opera production, seized on the implicit sexuality of the story and on Rusalka’s attempt to “become a woman” and made a finely wrought psychological drama of the opera, in which the Water Gnome and the Witch became Rusalka’s parents. I asked the choreographers of several productions to help me find a physical language to express her despair and what she terms her “neither woman nor nymph” state, once she is partially transformed into a human, for performing an act without singing seemed at first to be comparable to a violinist’s performing a concert without a violin.

  The final scene in Günther Schneider-Siemssen’s design for the Otto Schenk production, the version I have appeared in most often, is my favorite of all the realizations. In it Rusalka appears to be walking on water, though in fact it’s a sheet of Plexiglas that’s artfully lit and is embedded with metallic ribbons and threads. Rotating machines under the set gently move similarly decorated Mylar sheets to simulate the rippling of water under moonlight. The complete effect is really quite convincing, and what soprano wouldn’t like to walk on water just once? In the end, she can neither die nor go back to being a water nymph, and so she’s doomed to spend the rest of her days seducing men and leading them to their death from a dark place, deep in the water. At the heart of Rusalka are the themes of love and redemption, as is true of all of my favorite theatrical works, but one has to “dive” in to find the opera’s meaning. Rusalka swears she will not kill her lover, and yet she does so with a kiss, because he begs her to. He wants release from the shame and pain he has caused her, in the form of death. She asks God to take his beautiful human soul and returns to her own infinite, dark existence, to the tune of one of the most beautiful postludes in the entire operatic repertoire. Dvořák’s nymph is a far cry from the perky Little Mermaid in the Disney film, which is based on the same fairy tale of Undine, who winds up getting both her legs and her man.

  Sometimes the challenge of taking on a difficult role can lead to such a high level of success with a particular production that it becomes a favorite, as was the case when I sang Alcina with the Paris Opera at the old Palais Garnier in 1999. Susan Graham sang Ruggiero, the object of my affection, or rather obsession, and for each of us, it was a first attempt at a Handel opera. We were fortunate to have Robert Carsen as director and William Christie at the helm with Les Arts Florissants, his baroque orchestra, in the pit. When I first met Christie, I fully expected that he would ask me to sing the role very purely with no vibrato and a very white sound, which I was more than willing to try, but he was adamant: “This music made people swoon when it was premiered. People fainted. That’s what we’re going for.” He told me to bring everything I had to the score, every bit of expressive wallop I had, all the sex, all the jazz, everything. I kept nervously protesting, “No, no, no. Wait, you can’t be telling me this. You can’t mean that. This is not stylistically correct.” But he insisted, and so finally I tried to sing as I would jazz, bending a phrase here, flattening out a note there. I would begin a tone without vibrato and then add it later on. Performing in this manner was such a shock because it was Handel, after all, who I thought would be stylistically in line with Mozart, but Christie assured me otherwise. The end effect was successful, because we were willing to risk failure by opening up.

  Christie’s harpsichordist, Emmanuelle Haïm, and Gerald Moore and I worked out the embellishments and cadenzas for each of the da capo repeats of Alcina’s arias. This was a matter of tailor-making decorations that were expressive, interesting, and a perfect fit for my capabilities. By far the most time-consuming aspect of preparing a bel canto or Handel opera is memorizing, practicing, and reworking these embellishments, which usually go on until opening night. If I could, I would improvise them myself during every performance. The brilliant soprano Natalie Dessay, who sang Morgana, could, and did throughout rehearsals. When I mentioned to her that I was simply astounded by her singing and musical imagination, she laughed and demurred: “Oh, I sing them differently every day because I can’t remember what I did yesterday.”

  Rehearsals are always fun for me, because there’s no yardstick against which we have to measure ourselves. It’s all about exploration. Performing before an audience is wonderful, because you can draw upon their energy, but you expose yourself to their perceived judgment as well; as you are working out your concept of a role, it’s better to be free of that. The basis of Robert Carsen’s talent is his vast cultural education and impeccable taste. He’s fluent in several languages, is wonderfully imaginative, and never hesitates to push me to give my best,
even if it means creating tension in rehearsals. That tension never lasts, because I know that his motivation is to force me to take risks, and in doing so he gets results. Handel offers a tremendous challenge to a director in that his operas contain few ensembles or even duets, and their confusing and complex stories move forward slowly and usually only in the short recitatives between multiple long arias. This can be impossible for a director who needs to work realistically, but it is a wonderful opportunity for an abstract and imaginative thinker. Not only was this production musically perfect, it was also visually beautiful, thanks to the designer Tobias Hoheisel. The Alcina set was a white box, with doors that would open onto images of green forests and meadows, pictures of gorgeous and glimmering nature projected onto the back wall to give the illusion of depth to infinity. Thirty or forty men were arrayed onstage to portray Alcina’s victims as “rocks” (which also served as the real furniture), as Alcina is a sorceress who feels it is her calling to seduce and destroy men, until she falls in love with Ruggiero. Many of the men were naked, which, although slightly distracting at times for Susan and me, was certainly never dull. Alcina was one of those magical events in which the ideas were genuinely fresh, and both the critics and the audience loved it—a rare combination.

  There is a fine line between pushing myself creatively as an artist, by taking on new roles and by trying to find greater expressiveness in singing, and pushing my voice too hard, which means agreeing to a role that will ultimately be damaging. It is essential for any singer to know her own voice and abide by what she knows. It can be very flattering when impresarios tell me that I would make a perfect Salome or Isolde, and yes, I could most certainly sing all of the notes in those roles without any difficulty right now—but only without the orchestra, without emotion, without the stentorian colleagues I would share the piece with, and without the little voice in my head telling me I’d better live up to great past performances, so I’d better “sing out, Louise.”

  The greatest challenge I have faced vocally is without a doubt the bel canto repertoire, the roles composed for virtuosic singers in the nineteenth century by Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini. When choosing arias for my Bel Canto recording, I was surprised to realize that I had already performed so many of these roles, most of them early in my career, and each of them was an education in vocalism and dramatization: all of the requisite perfection of tone and style of Mozart with a greater range, real coloratura fireworks, trills, and expressive bravura. Add to that the spare plots and my least favorite conceit—the heroine as victim—and only true dramatic commitment will sell these works. However, what attracts me most about this repertoire is the freedom of the cantabile line, which really does hearken back to jazz in my taste, and back to William Christie’s maxim that nothing but the entire expressive gamut will do. One can veer away from the often minimal contribution of the orchestra and stretch and pull the melody to one’s heart’s content, as long as it doesn’t stray too long and the underlying pulse remains. The composers themselves indicated few expressive markings, so what is left? Imagination! How would Amina sound if she was asleep, or awake, in my favorite scene from La Sonnambula? What does heartbreak sound like in a voice? Despair? How can tears be expressed vocally? Can the voice speak directly from the heart, without the slightest intermediary? This is the freedom of bel canto, and this is why the recitative of “Ah! non credea” on my Bel Canto recording is the work I’m proudest of to date. The late, great producer Erik Smith and I spent hours in the studio finding the most expressive takes, so that we could most artfully flesh out those scenes.

  For a soprano bel canto also requires a mastery of singing in the passaggio, the stamina to sing long, dramatic scenes without interludes—six of them in the case of Il Pirata. The last page is, of course, always the most demanding, and just when one’s larynx feels as if it’s risen to eye level. It is uncomfortable, to say the least. I always tell young singers to have a sense of leading their tone and not pushing it, using those small points beside the nose, and to keep their sound slim, with as much head voice as possible. (Just as with a piece of luggage, it works better when you pull rather than push.) When the voice is pushed, chances are too much breath pressure is being applied through too small a space. In early lessons, a yawn is usually used to indicate the needed space, but it’s important not to “yawn” too aggressively and push down on the larynx, either. Finally, this must all be executed with enough support to keep the sound buoyed, but not pressed. I stay constantly involved in regulating the airflow as I sing a difficult passage. The process is practically unconscious at this point, but the effort persists: “No, the sound has just turned a bit grainy. Ease off on the breath now,” “Stop pushing,” “Maintain support,” “Lift your chest and relax the back of your neck and trapezius,” “OK, feed a little bit more breath,” “Keep the resonance high.” This is the type of technical attentiveness that will also get me through passages like the final scene of Capriccio. The goal is always to have singing be as effortless and as efficient as possible. This requires attention to both how the voice feels and how it sounds. The difficult thing to understand is that harm from faulty technique doesn’t show up immediately, and it might even be the case that it doesn’t feel wrong at the time.

  Protecting my voice doesn’t mean seeking out undemanding roles, but rather singing roles that are a perfect fit for me. Often what is right for me would be nearly impossible for someone else, and vice versa. I only discovered halfway through a rehearsal period in Paris that I could indeed sing the rangy and very long Manon of Massenet. Until then, I had visions of myself apologizing to the audience on opening night before the Cours-la-Reine scene, delivering a humble speech about not knowing my limitations, and assuring them that they’d never have to see me again, as I beat a hasty retreat. Fortunately, I discovered instead that I had grown into the role, and it would soon become an absolute favorite. What a feast! Manon and I met during a long period of exploration of French repertoire: Marguerite, Thaïs, Louise, Anna in La Dame Blanche, Salomé in Hérodiade, as well as roles in Platée and Médée. After English, French is the language I most enjoy performing in, for its nasal vowels help me to maintain the high placement that is safest for my voice, and the fluidity of the vocal line lends itself especially well to singing. I also find myself continually intrigued by the complexity of Manon’s character. Her ability to acknowledge her shallowness and then to go on blithely being shallow is a somewhat refreshing change after all of the archetypally virtuous heroines I usually play. I’m also challenged by the enormous journey she takes, from innocent coquette to runaway adventurer, from fame-seeking gold digger to repentant lover, who finally boldly decides she should have it all, and is punished with imprisonment and ultimately death.

  Once I could manage Manon’s vocal hurdles, stamina became an issue, which meant carefully gauging the use of my energy and voice in the early scenes. The first season in Paris, I almost didn’t make it through the final scene in the first few performances and had to drop a few pitches just to survive. I eventually found my stride, as I did during one of my first performances of this role at the Met, when I discovered that I was in an unexpected duet. I made my entrance for the grand Cours-la-Reine scene in the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production’s enormous red corseted dress with wide pannier. As I began singing I heard what I thought was someone joining me from backstage, but in a mocking way. It was a man’s voice, and I thought that it must have been some new stagehand who hadn’t yet been indoctrinated in the distinctive sounds of opera. As it continued, I became more and more annoyed by the distraction—until suddenly I realized that audience members were tittering, for the sound had actually carried out to the house. In that scene the chorus shares the stage with me in tableau, meaning without moving, and in my peripheral vision I saw one of its members sheepishly leading a very large borzoi off the stage. It was then that I realized that my partner was a dog, which had begun to sing with me, or howl. (The audience howled, too, though not in the s
ame way.) For my part, I was more than slightly concerned about the fact that the dog’s high notes were rather good. When the curtain came down, and I said firmly to members of the artistic management who came running backstage, “It’s the dog or me,” I was sure I detected some hesitation.

  Richard Strauss has become my core composer, in a sense, replacing Mozart. I’ve never completely understood the label “Mozart/Strauss soprano,” because the music is so different, but historically it is true that many Countesses and Fiordiligis have also become Arabellas, Marschallins, and Capriccio Countesses, as the roles do require similar vocal weights and, more important, temperaments. For me a stretching of comfortable limits is also important from time to time. A good example is the title role in Daphne, which presents a great challenge because it is so fiendishly composed. Four of the five principal roles in this opera are what I would call “extreme Strauss,” with writing that tests the absolute limit of each voice type in range, tessitura, and volume.