July 12, 2018 • 22 mins
Opera singers are famous for being divas on an off the stage, but American soprano Renee Flemming has spent her long and notable career developing a different persona, often being called the "People's Diva."
For many of Fleming's fans, she is the first, and perhaps the only opera star they have ever paid close attention to, selling more than 2 million records, winning Grammy's and other awards for her work, and even singing the national anthem at the 2014 Super Bowl.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Opera singers are famous for being diva's on and off
the stage, but American soprano Renee Fleming has spent her
long and notable career developing a different persona, often being
called the people's diva. For many a Fleming's fan, she
is the first and perhaps the only opera star they've
ever paid close attention to, selling more than two million records,
(00:23):
winning Grammys and other awards for her work, and even
singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl. Most recently,
Fleming has been starring in the Broadway production of Carousel
in her Tony nominated role as Nettie Fowler. She recently
sat down with Carlisle Group co founder David Rubenstein. They
spoke on David Rubinstein's Bloomberg television program Peer to Peer Conversations.
(00:47):
You are performing in Carousel, which is not an opera,
It's a Broadway play. Why are you doing that and
not opera? I just thought, wow, it would be really
exciting to do something new. I always love doing new things.
It's just been an extraordinary experience. I'm the kind of
person that if I were to say no for any
number of reasons, I would always wonder, what if and
(01:08):
so rather than wondering, I typically jump in so opera
because usually two or three nights a week, perhaps if
you're doing a show, and let's say the Metropolitan, but
you're now doing eight shows a week. So just you
touched on the actual huge difference, right, So you strain
your voice doing eight shows a week? Is that hurt
you if you're gonna go do opera later? It wasn't
(01:29):
that long ago really that people were unamplified on Broadway
and they sang by in large closer to the way
that I do because of the drama. They absolutely put
amplification into every theater now and that makes all the
difference in the world. So on the opera stage, our
bodies are the amplifiers. We have to create enough sound
to be heard over an orchestra chorus and into the
(01:52):
back of a large hall on Broadway. The really the
mechanism of microphones and amplification and a really great sound
is they do that work for us and we can
kind of take not take it easy, per se, but
not use power. So explain for people may not be
familiar with this. In opera, there's no amplification allowed. You
can't use microphone or anything like that. Why is that?
(02:15):
Do you know? It's it's the art form is old,
it's it's it's been that way always, And frankly, I
believe that the way we're trained enables us to be heard,
and the the individual quality that we have is so
powerful and beautiful, actually because we all sound quite different.
When Oscar Hammers sign and Richard Rogers wrote the play
(02:37):
and the music for Carousel, they knew at the time
that some of the lyrics were complicated and there was
a bit of spousal abuse. And you have concerns about that,
I actually think you know, and most of opera and
most of history really Shakespeare also looked at so many
of these things. I think it's worth, um portraying these
(02:57):
aspects of the human condition, of human experience, so that
we can talk about it, so that we can air it.
It's important to give people a platform to say I
had a bad experience. UM, no one should. Who should
ever come to an audience and feel taken unawares, I think,
and be be hurt by something, but we should be
affected by it. You sing one of the highlights of
(03:18):
the show, it's the song at the end, And what
is that song that is so well known that you've
sung before about I guess walking alone, So You'll never
walk alone is one of the great iconic songs. It's
a universal statement about hope and about resilience. And in
this piece, it's my character Nettie sings it to Julie
(03:40):
Justice Billy has died, and um, it's very moving in context.
And I've sung it a lot before. I sing it
for the nine eleven memorial a year after nine eleven
in Washington, and I've sung it all through the years. Um,
it's something that people absolutely love. Let's talk about how
(04:18):
you became a very famous soprano, perhaps the most famous
in the world. Um, you grew up in New York.
To repeat that, I loved it, so I love that,
David's true. Just keep saying that, thank you. So you
grew up in upstate New York, right, and your parents
were music teachers. Yes, So did they always say to
(04:39):
you you should grow up to be a great opera
singer or they never bothered you to No, No, They're shocked.
They were absolutely shocked. They said, get get a teaching degree,
and you know you're not going to be a forget
about that. It's just too impossible. So you know, you
can imagine their surprise. My mother is still teaching voice.
She's not She loves it. She's very passionate about teaching. Uh.
(05:01):
And I you know, it's it's step by step, it's
it takes an incredible amount of drive, I think, and
um and resilience again because you know, it's it's hugely competitive. Well,
when you were a little girl, you were singing in
many different plays. I guess school plays and so forth.
I did musicals. I sang a lot of musical and
never sang a musical again until now. So when you
(05:23):
apply to college, you wanted to go to a school
that had a very good music program, and you applied
to Oberlin and you got into Berlin, but your parents
really couldn't afford for you to go there, So you
went to State University in post Yes, and it turned
out that was a pretty good thing for you because
they had a very good school of music. Is that right.
That's and a great voice teacher. So that and that's
really the one of the key components for success is
(05:45):
having someone who can help you develop your voice. And
it's not easy. It's a very individual when you think
about it. Every instrument is different. Um, it's internal the voice,
and it requires for each bone structure and each kind
of physical structure a different set of of of rules
for technique. So when you went there, you realize you
(06:06):
were probably better than the average person, and you began
to sing a little bit professionally, but you did some
jazz singing as well. You weren't necessary an opera singer.
Did you like jazz more than opera? I'm still a
jazz fanatic. I listened to it a lot, you know,
I've been biking on the river, and that's that's how
I distress. And I listened to a lot of my
favorite performers. Uh so, yeah, I still really love that.
(06:27):
But I think classical for me it was a better
fit for my temperament. I was shy um. I preferred
to be in the practice room kind of unlocking and
working on the process of learning how to sing. I
loved that as opposed to being an extrovert and a performer.
I had to learn that. When did you realize that
you actually were good enough to maybe be a professional singer?
I just kept going along, So it wasn't as if
(06:49):
I made a decision. I think when I had the
Fulbright scholarship. That was a big journey point for me
to be in Europe, to be steeped in a foreign
language and studying. I loved that. You begin to prepare
UH to maybe an opera career. How did you actually
break through? You know, you finally somebody has to take
a chance. You know, you have to have one person,
one impersario who says, I don't care what other people sink.
(07:11):
I like this soprano and I'm going to give her
a break. And your first break was in Houston. And
how did that come about? Somebody called you and said,
somebody got sick and can you come and perform exactly
what I had audition for the program for the studio,
the Young Artist program. A few months later they called
and said, we had a cancelation singing opera. You sing
(07:41):
from the chess more and not from the uh throat,
So we use an optimal breath um expansion sort of intake,
and then support. Support is really a key thing if
that optimizes the the amount of sound you can make
without using pressure, without actually tiring yourself. So somebody can
(08:02):
go to a sports event and shout and their horse
the next day you hear or you say, were you
at a rock concert? Where you at a sports event?
Where were you? Were you out dancing? You know that
someone has heard their voice, will sing for three hours. Um,
just as extreme in terms of how we're using our
voice and the next day we can do it again.
When you're singing opera and you don't know the language,
(08:22):
is that very difficult? Well? I sing in about eight
eight nine languages, you know, if you include Lord of
the Rings, and I only speak really three of them. Um,
for if you include English. So learning everything else, whether
Russian or Check, is by rote. It's memorizing sounds. You
(08:47):
have to sound authentic and you also have to memorize
what everyone else is saying. So it's just very time
when you don't know the language you memorize by rope.
Do you actually know what the words say? Or you
just you know what the sound is? You have to
learn it all. Why is that you think opera has
(09:22):
declining attendance, as does all classical music, Well I would
have I would have tried to explain that, but actually
attendances down a major sports arenas as well. I do
think there is so much available to people for entertainment
and a lot of it is digital, and a lot
of it is on television that people buy and large.
I mean, I see this with young people around me.
(09:42):
They just they don't want to spend the money. They
don't go out. The other thing I want to say
is when I moved to New York, there were only
a few venues there were There were theaters on Broadway,
and there were a few classical music venues, a couple
of dance venues. That was it. Now there's a performing
arts center every other block. So I'm opening the Shed,
which is opening it a year from now. Spectacular. UM.
(10:04):
It's extraordinary architecture, an extraordinary opportunity to create only new work. UM.
And I'm thrilled to be participating in the first piece
that they're going to present. So opera is something that
you are going to continue doing. There was a story
once in the New York Times that said, you were
going to finish your career at the Met at a
certain point in two thousand seventeen, but you're still doing
(10:26):
operas that right, right? I mean, that was you know,
that was really unfair. That was the headline, you know,
that was trying to draw attention. So when you do today,
you do opera, you're doing other times of music. I
mostly concertise, and that's what I've been doing for fifteen years.
I'd say I spent eight percent of my time on
the concert stage, which enables me to get around the world.
(10:47):
I love creating the Renee Fleming show, whatever it is,
I think the audience will enjoy the most, a mixture
usually of repertoire UH and I and I love meeting
new audiences and having that one on one communication. I'm
(11:12):
working on a new piece for the Met. Actually that
will be this can't be announced yet, but it's really
exciting to contemplate. So I'm going to go I think
back to the Met and but but frankly, you know,
and I have another major theatrical project after the Shed,
so I didn't even know that I would be doing
this much theater. So you're singing the songs that won
(11:32):
the Academy Award, Yes, exactly. Um, well, Alexander displat one
for the music in general, but the shape of Water,
of this beautiful song. It was in the credits and
halfway through the film as well. You never know just
so much famous UH sopranos are sometimes labeled as divas
(11:58):
or prima donnas Maria Alice being a good example of that. Um,
but you don't have that reputation, So how did you
avoid that reputation? Gosh, you know, I just wish I
could have called I just wanted to nurture that a
little bit so I could be the subject of dinner conversations.
And I just couldn't do it. I've never been good
at it. But in other words, uh, the ego that's
(12:18):
involved with being a great soprano obviously gets to a
lot of people. I think it comes out of anxiety.
It comes from it's a certain kind of a huge
anxiety about performance pressure and and and let's not diminish
what performance pressure means. It is really challenging and some people,
you know, if you make it to the top, even
staying at the top is terribly difficult. So, UM, I
(12:41):
have internalized the pressure that I have felt over the years.
And that's not really great yet either, because it's not
fun to feel like that. But other people externalize it
and they take it out on whoever is around them,
and somehow that's how that happens. And then they go
on stage and they're grade now because of the pressure
of being an opera singer. Sometimes you need an outlet,
and what did you do for an outlet? I am
(13:02):
a culture fanatic, I am, and I am also um
fascinated by I want to learn. I'm a lifelong learner. Um,
so I'm going to museums in theater. I love, absolutely
love theater. Uh. And I love beauty and nature very much.
So I'm enjoying nurturing young talent and I'll hope to
continue doing that in a more meaningful way in the future.
(13:36):
You're also working with n I H and Francis Collins
ahead of it to try to show that actually music
can help people get healthier. Can you explain that? So? Um?
I basically met Francis Collins as the director of the
National Institutes of Health at a dinner party, an amazing
dinner party with Justices Scalia Ginsburg and Kennedy. Uh and
uh he was we were we had to sing along.
(13:59):
When you're doing a thing along, isn't everybody else intimidated?
You're not exactly the average sing along. Yeah. We were
kind of singing this land as your land. There were
songs that everybody knew and they loved it. And I
said to Frances at some point in the evening, I said,
you know, there's so much neuroscience about music, Um, what
would you think about collaborating with the Kennedy Center. And
he said, yes, let's let's look into that. And it's
(14:20):
turned into this really extraordinary project. It's about drawing attention
to the power of music. The neuroscience is new, it's
relatively new and becoming more widely known. But how it
helps childhood, in childhood development, how it helps with so
many therapies for autism, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, UM for veterans. I
(14:40):
gave fourteen presentations in the last six months around the
country where I sing UM sharing the kind of the
all of the knowledge that I'm gaining in a hopefully
entertaining way. So when UM, people come up to you
young performers to say I want to be a famous
opera singer, what is the advice you give them? Well,
I really advised people first and foremost not to accept
(15:01):
any limitations. Now you not only have to sing fabulously,
have a super technique and really be able to trust
your voice. You have to look fabulous, look like the
character you're playing, and act amazingly well. And a lot
of this has developed since I started singing, and I'm
sure the demands will be even more in the future.
So if I wanted to learn how to be an
opera singer, it's late. I guess in life you have
(15:22):
to learn earlier. You can't start late in life, right,
typically not typically? And today when you go to master
classes you teach people, Um, do you ever see anybody
you think this person really is talented? Or you oh, yeah, absolutely,
I absolutely. You know, there are a lot of diamonds
in the rough out there. And we also say the
greatest singers in the world probably don't even know they
have a voice. Well okay, so so David, you know,
(15:46):
we could work on it a little bit and see
just check out the town I have. Every time I
have ever sung, people say you are completely tone deaf.
So I don't think I have the skill. So if
you had to pay to watch opera, who would you
to pay to listen to? Who are the great opera
male and female performers that you would have paid to hear?
Oh gosh, I mean I would have loved to have
(16:08):
heard Maria Collis because of her musicianship. I mean I
still go to her records all the time. Um, Victoria
las Anels. I don't think I ever heard her sing live.
I'm a huge fan of her singing Schwartzkopf. I did
a masterclass with her, but I never heard her sing live.
So there have been great history. We belong to a tapestry.
Um that is really historic, and I love that connection
(16:31):
to what's come before, and I love celebrating that. And
you know, that's something we lose in our culture right
now because of this connection to to to social media
and to the here and now in the momentary. This
idea that you become really wonderful. It's something that and
you learn about what people have done before you. You
(17:13):
have two daughters today want to be singers. They're wonderful singers. Um.
They know too much, so they neither of them want
to pursue singing. So again they the lifestyle is challenging.
So I am on the road literally every three days,
I'm on a plane. Well, when your daughters were younger,
you've written the fact that you would pack them up
and take them on the road with you and get
tutors or other than that. Complicated, yeah, but worth it,
(17:37):
totally worth it. I really believe that their home was
with me that their home was with the people who
loved them, and and that's worked out well. They've turned
into fabulous young women. So if you had the chance
to sing one opera, only one more opera, for the
rest of your life, what opera would you want to be?
Because there one of rosen Cavalier was absolutely my favorite.
(18:03):
The most interesting woman, the most complex. Um, you know,
just such a three dimensional woman, which you don't find
very much. If me too is an issue, most of
what we do. An opera would not be performed because
women are victimized right and left. An opera because it's
a it's an historic art form. So um, that's why
the marshal in who has power, who has even though
(18:26):
she's she's complex, she is much more interesting. You've done
Broadway opera, um, classical music as or something you haven't
done that you would like to do. Gosh, you know what, David,
I'm it's already so much richer than I ever could
have imagined. If you told me that I would be
in a musical on Broadway, I would have said unlikely, unlikely.
So I don't think I have a wish list. What
(18:49):
I do have is an open mind and a and
a belief in the future. I absolutely believe that things
come to us if we work hard and we're dedicated,
(19:11):
and we love what we're doing, we're passionate. When you're
an opera singer, you can't yell at anybody or yell
anything because you could ruin your voice. Do you ever
worry about that? Or you just don't worry about that.
I made that mistake once. Uh, one of my daughter's
was upstairs and I shout in a moment, I shouted
at her, and I felt it. I went, Oh, I
(19:32):
had to cancel three performances at the met in a
production that was that was built for me. So that
was really unfortunate. So like in my case, I'm not
a good singer, as I mentioned I have. I'm completely
tone deaf. But you know I can sing in the
shower and nobody objects. So can an opera singer sing
in the shower. That's not possible. Oh it's great to
(19:52):
sing in the shower. It's a good place to warm up.
You have all that moisture. You know you're in fact,
you might become a better singer by singing in this
Maybe that I mean as your practice. That more I
think about that the thing that you're most proud of
having achieved in your life, other than let's say, raising
two very talented young women your daughters. What would you
say your your most achieved that's given you most pride?
(20:14):
Is it coming from very modest circumstances to becoming one
of the most famous people in the world in the
opera world, or what would you say it is? Well,
I do share with you this extraordinary wonder at the
realm of possibilities that we have as Americans because, um,
some of my relatives were literally coal miners in Pennsylvania.
(20:35):
And I have sat next to Prince Charles and next
to the King of Sweden at dinner parties and at
various performances, and I always stop and say, isn't this amazing?
And literally in two generations that I have this, this
ability to travel the world and experience every place I
(20:56):
go um at the most extraordinary level. And the legacy
that you would like people to um think about you,
let's say, twenty years from now, when you people look back,
I think I really expanded the possibilities for the singers
who came after me by singing in multiple genre, by
singing jazz, by singing, making a rock album, now singing
in music theater. Um. When I started, people discouraged that
(21:19):
very heavily. They said, no, you're going to ruin your legacy.
You will, um, you, you, you will ruin the way
in which you're viewed critically. You must not step out
of the box. In fact, the more specialized you are,
the better. And I just thought, I, I'm too curious,
I want to try new things, So I just ignored
that advice. When you're an opera, when you go out
(21:42):
for a boutt can go on for ten minutes, twenty minutes.
How long do you go out before you realize it's
finally time to leave the stage and bowing and opera
is an art form unto itself. It's another performance, and
some people do it extremely well, and the audience loves it.
They love it, you know, I sort of forced. I
had friends who would yell at me through my whole career.
(22:03):
Stay on stage. The audience wants to show you their love,
their appreciation. So um, it didn't come supernaturally to me.
Opera singers are famous for being diva's on and off
the stage, but American soprano Renee Fleming has spent her
long and notable career developing a different persona, often being
called the people's diva. For many a Fleming's fan, she
is the first and perhaps the only opera star they've
ever paid close attention to, selling more than two million records,
(00:23):
winning Grammys and other awards for her work, and even
singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl. Most recently,
Fleming has been starring in the Broadway production of Carousel
in her Tony nominated role as Nettie Fowler. She recently
sat down with Carlisle Group co founder David Rubenstein. They
spoke on David Rubinstein's Bloomberg television program Peer to Peer Conversations.
(00:47):
You are performing in Carousel, which is not an opera,
It's a Broadway play. Why are you doing that and
not opera? I just thought, wow, it would be really
exciting to do something new. I always love doing new things.
It's just been an extraordinary experience. I'm the kind of
person that if I were to say no for any
number of reasons, I would always wonder, what if and
(01:08):
so rather than wondering, I typically jump in so opera
because usually two or three nights a week, perhaps if
you're doing a show, and let's say the Metropolitan, but
you're now doing eight shows a week. So just you
touched on the actual huge difference, right, So you strain
your voice doing eight shows a week? Is that hurt
you if you're gonna go do opera later? It wasn't
(01:29):
that long ago really that people were unamplified on Broadway
and they sang by in large closer to the way
that I do because of the drama. They absolutely put
amplification into every theater now and that makes all the
difference in the world. So on the opera stage, our
bodies are the amplifiers. We have to create enough sound
to be heard over an orchestra chorus and into the
(01:52):
back of a large hall on Broadway. The really the
mechanism of microphones and amplification and a really great sound
is they do that work for us and we can
kind of take not take it easy, per se, but
not use power. So explain for people may not be
familiar with this. In opera, there's no amplification allowed. You
can't use microphone or anything like that. Why is that?
(02:15):
Do you know? It's it's the art form is old,
it's it's it's been that way always, And frankly, I
believe that the way we're trained enables us to be heard,
and the the individual quality that we have is so
powerful and beautiful, actually because we all sound quite different.
When Oscar Hammers sign and Richard Rogers wrote the play
(02:37):
and the music for Carousel, they knew at the time
that some of the lyrics were complicated and there was
a bit of spousal abuse. And you have concerns about that,
I actually think you know, and most of opera and
most of history really Shakespeare also looked at so many
of these things. I think it's worth, um portraying these
(02:57):
aspects of the human condition, of human experience, so that
we can talk about it, so that we can air it.
It's important to give people a platform to say I
had a bad experience. UM, no one should. Who should
ever come to an audience and feel taken unawares, I think,
and be be hurt by something, but we should be
affected by it. You sing one of the highlights of
(03:18):
the show, it's the song at the end, And what
is that song that is so well known that you've
sung before about I guess walking alone, So You'll never
walk alone is one of the great iconic songs. It's
a universal statement about hope and about resilience. And in
this piece, it's my character Nettie sings it to Julie
(03:40):
Justice Billy has died, and um, it's very moving in context.
And I've sung it a lot before. I sing it
for the nine eleven memorial a year after nine eleven
in Washington, and I've sung it all through the years. Um,
it's something that people absolutely love. Let's talk about how
(04:18):
you became a very famous soprano, perhaps the most famous
in the world. Um, you grew up in New York.
To repeat that, I loved it, so I love that,
David's true. Just keep saying that, thank you. So you
grew up in upstate New York, right, and your parents
were music teachers. Yes, So did they always say to
(04:39):
you you should grow up to be a great opera
singer or they never bothered you to No, No, They're shocked.
They were absolutely shocked. They said, get get a teaching degree,
and you know you're not going to be a forget
about that. It's just too impossible. So you know, you
can imagine their surprise. My mother is still teaching voice.
She's not She loves it. She's very passionate about teaching. Uh.
(05:01):
And I you know, it's it's step by step, it's
it takes an incredible amount of drive, I think, and
um and resilience again because you know, it's it's hugely competitive. Well,
when you were a little girl, you were singing in
many different plays. I guess school plays and so forth.
I did musicals. I sang a lot of musical and
never sang a musical again until now. So when you
(05:23):
apply to college, you wanted to go to a school
that had a very good music program, and you applied
to Oberlin and you got into Berlin, but your parents
really couldn't afford for you to go there, So you
went to State University in post Yes, and it turned
out that was a pretty good thing for you because
they had a very good school of music. Is that right.
That's and a great voice teacher. So that and that's
really the one of the key components for success is
(05:45):
having someone who can help you develop your voice. And
it's not easy. It's a very individual when you think
about it. Every instrument is different. Um, it's internal the voice,
and it requires for each bone structure and each kind
of physical structure a different set of of of rules
for technique. So when you went there, you realize you
(06:06):
were probably better than the average person, and you began
to sing a little bit professionally, but you did some
jazz singing as well. You weren't necessary an opera singer.
Did you like jazz more than opera? I'm still a
jazz fanatic. I listened to it a lot, you know,
I've been biking on the river, and that's that's how
I distress. And I listened to a lot of my
favorite performers. Uh so, yeah, I still really love that.
(06:27):
But I think classical for me it was a better
fit for my temperament. I was shy um. I preferred
to be in the practice room kind of unlocking and
working on the process of learning how to sing. I
loved that as opposed to being an extrovert and a performer.
I had to learn that. When did you realize that
you actually were good enough to maybe be a professional singer?
I just kept going along, So it wasn't as if
(06:49):
I made a decision. I think when I had the
Fulbright scholarship. That was a big journey point for me
to be in Europe, to be steeped in a foreign
language and studying. I loved that. You begin to prepare
UH to maybe an opera career. How did you actually
break through? You know, you finally somebody has to take
a chance. You know, you have to have one person,
one impersario who says, I don't care what other people sink.
(07:11):
I like this soprano and I'm going to give her
a break. And your first break was in Houston. And
how did that come about? Somebody called you and said,
somebody got sick and can you come and perform exactly
what I had audition for the program for the studio,
the Young Artist program. A few months later they called
and said, we had a cancelation singing opera. You sing
(07:41):
from the chess more and not from the uh throat,
So we use an optimal breath um expansion sort of intake,
and then support. Support is really a key thing if
that optimizes the the amount of sound you can make
without using pressure, without actually tiring yourself. So somebody can
(08:02):
go to a sports event and shout and their horse
the next day you hear or you say, were you
at a rock concert? Where you at a sports event?
Where were you? Were you out dancing? You know that
someone has heard their voice, will sing for three hours. Um,
just as extreme in terms of how we're using our
voice and the next day we can do it again.
When you're singing opera and you don't know the language,
(08:22):
is that very difficult? Well? I sing in about eight
eight nine languages, you know, if you include Lord of
the Rings, and I only speak really three of them. Um,
for if you include English. So learning everything else, whether
Russian or Check, is by rote. It's memorizing sounds. You
(08:47):
have to sound authentic and you also have to memorize
what everyone else is saying. So it's just very time
when you don't know the language you memorize by rope.
Do you actually know what the words say? Or you
just you know what the sound is? You have to
learn it all. Why is that you think opera has
(09:22):
declining attendance, as does all classical music, Well I would
have I would have tried to explain that, but actually
attendances down a major sports arenas as well. I do
think there is so much available to people for entertainment
and a lot of it is digital, and a lot
of it is on television that people buy and large.
I mean, I see this with young people around me.
(09:42):
They just they don't want to spend the money. They
don't go out. The other thing I want to say
is when I moved to New York, there were only
a few venues there were There were theaters on Broadway,
and there were a few classical music venues, a couple
of dance venues. That was it. Now there's a performing
arts center every other block. So I'm opening the Shed,
which is opening it a year from now. Spectacular. UM.
(10:04):
It's extraordinary architecture, an extraordinary opportunity to create only new work. UM.
And I'm thrilled to be participating in the first piece
that they're going to present. So opera is something that
you are going to continue doing. There was a story
once in the New York Times that said, you were
going to finish your career at the Met at a
certain point in two thousand seventeen, but you're still doing
(10:26):
operas that right, right? I mean, that was you know,
that was really unfair. That was the headline, you know,
that was trying to draw attention. So when you do today,
you do opera, you're doing other times of music. I
mostly concertise, and that's what I've been doing for fifteen years.
I'd say I spent eight percent of my time on
the concert stage, which enables me to get around the world.
(10:47):
I love creating the Renee Fleming show, whatever it is,
I think the audience will enjoy the most, a mixture
usually of repertoire UH and I and I love meeting
new audiences and having that one on one communication. I'm
(11:12):
working on a new piece for the Met. Actually that
will be this can't be announced yet, but it's really
exciting to contemplate. So I'm going to go I think
back to the Met and but but frankly, you know,
and I have another major theatrical project after the Shed,
so I didn't even know that I would be doing
this much theater. So you're singing the songs that won
(11:32):
the Academy Award, Yes, exactly. Um, well, Alexander displat one
for the music in general, but the shape of Water,
of this beautiful song. It was in the credits and
halfway through the film as well. You never know just
so much famous UH sopranos are sometimes labeled as divas
(11:58):
or prima donnas Maria Alice being a good example of that. Um,
but you don't have that reputation, So how did you
avoid that reputation? Gosh, you know, I just wish I
could have called I just wanted to nurture that a
little bit so I could be the subject of dinner conversations.
And I just couldn't do it. I've never been good
at it. But in other words, uh, the ego that's
(12:18):
involved with being a great soprano obviously gets to a
lot of people. I think it comes out of anxiety.
It comes from it's a certain kind of a huge
anxiety about performance pressure and and and let's not diminish
what performance pressure means. It is really challenging and some people,
you know, if you make it to the top, even
staying at the top is terribly difficult. So, UM, I
(12:41):
have internalized the pressure that I have felt over the years.
And that's not really great yet either, because it's not
fun to feel like that. But other people externalize it
and they take it out on whoever is around them,
and somehow that's how that happens. And then they go
on stage and they're grade now because of the pressure
of being an opera singer. Sometimes you need an outlet,
and what did you do for an outlet? I am
(13:02):
a culture fanatic, I am, and I am also um
fascinated by I want to learn. I'm a lifelong learner. Um,
so I'm going to museums in theater. I love, absolutely
love theater. Uh. And I love beauty and nature very much.
So I'm enjoying nurturing young talent and I'll hope to
continue doing that in a more meaningful way in the future.
(13:36):
You're also working with n I H and Francis Collins
ahead of it to try to show that actually music
can help people get healthier. Can you explain that? So? Um?
I basically met Francis Collins as the director of the
National Institutes of Health at a dinner party, an amazing
dinner party with Justices Scalia Ginsburg and Kennedy. Uh and
uh he was we were we had to sing along.
(13:59):
When you're doing a thing along, isn't everybody else intimidated?
You're not exactly the average sing along. Yeah. We were
kind of singing this land as your land. There were
songs that everybody knew and they loved it. And I
said to Frances at some point in the evening, I said,
you know, there's so much neuroscience about music, Um, what
would you think about collaborating with the Kennedy Center. And
he said, yes, let's let's look into that. And it's
(14:20):
turned into this really extraordinary project. It's about drawing attention
to the power of music. The neuroscience is new, it's
relatively new and becoming more widely known. But how it
helps childhood, in childhood development, how it helps with so
many therapies for autism, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, UM for veterans. I
(14:40):
gave fourteen presentations in the last six months around the
country where I sing UM sharing the kind of the
all of the knowledge that I'm gaining in a hopefully
entertaining way. So when UM, people come up to you
young performers to say I want to be a famous
opera singer, what is the advice you give them? Well,
I really advised people first and foremost not to accept
(15:01):
any limitations. Now you not only have to sing fabulously,
have a super technique and really be able to trust
your voice. You have to look fabulous, look like the
character you're playing, and act amazingly well. And a lot
of this has developed since I started singing, and I'm
sure the demands will be even more in the future.
So if I wanted to learn how to be an
opera singer, it's late. I guess in life you have
(15:22):
to learn earlier. You can't start late in life, right,
typically not typically? And today when you go to master
classes you teach people, Um, do you ever see anybody
you think this person really is talented? Or you oh, yeah, absolutely,
I absolutely. You know, there are a lot of diamonds
in the rough out there. And we also say the
greatest singers in the world probably don't even know they
have a voice. Well okay, so so David, you know,
(15:46):
we could work on it a little bit and see
just check out the town I have. Every time I
have ever sung, people say you are completely tone deaf.
So I don't think I have the skill. So if
you had to pay to watch opera, who would you
to pay to listen to? Who are the great opera
male and female performers that you would have paid to hear?
Oh gosh, I mean I would have loved to have
(16:08):
heard Maria Collis because of her musicianship. I mean I
still go to her records all the time. Um, Victoria
las Anels. I don't think I ever heard her sing live.
I'm a huge fan of her singing Schwartzkopf. I did
a masterclass with her, but I never heard her sing live.
So there have been great history. We belong to a tapestry.
Um that is really historic, and I love that connection
(16:31):
to what's come before, and I love celebrating that. And
you know, that's something we lose in our culture right
now because of this connection to to to social media
and to the here and now in the momentary. This
idea that you become really wonderful. It's something that and
you learn about what people have done before you. You
(17:13):
have two daughters today want to be singers. They're wonderful singers. Um.
They know too much, so they neither of them want
to pursue singing. So again they the lifestyle is challenging.
So I am on the road literally every three days,
I'm on a plane. Well, when your daughters were younger,
you've written the fact that you would pack them up
and take them on the road with you and get
tutors or other than that. Complicated, yeah, but worth it,
(17:37):
totally worth it. I really believe that their home was
with me that their home was with the people who
loved them, and and that's worked out well. They've turned
into fabulous young women. So if you had the chance
to sing one opera, only one more opera, for the
rest of your life, what opera would you want to be?
Because there one of rosen Cavalier was absolutely my favorite.
(18:03):
The most interesting woman, the most complex. Um, you know,
just such a three dimensional woman, which you don't find
very much. If me too is an issue, most of
what we do. An opera would not be performed because
women are victimized right and left. An opera because it's
a it's an historic art form. So um, that's why
the marshal in who has power, who has even though
(18:26):
she's she's complex, she is much more interesting. You've done
Broadway opera, um, classical music as or something you haven't
done that you would like to do. Gosh, you know what, David,
I'm it's already so much richer than I ever could
have imagined. If you told me that I would be
in a musical on Broadway, I would have said unlikely, unlikely.
So I don't think I have a wish list. What
(18:49):
I do have is an open mind and a and
a belief in the future. I absolutely believe that things
come to us if we work hard and we're dedicated,
(19:11):
and we love what we're doing, we're passionate. When you're
an opera singer, you can't yell at anybody or yell
anything because you could ruin your voice. Do you ever
worry about that? Or you just don't worry about that.
I made that mistake once. Uh, one of my daughter's
was upstairs and I shout in a moment, I shouted
at her, and I felt it. I went, Oh, I
(19:32):
had to cancel three performances at the met in a
production that was that was built for me. So that
was really unfortunate. So like in my case, I'm not
a good singer, as I mentioned I have. I'm completely
tone deaf. But you know I can sing in the
shower and nobody objects. So can an opera singer sing
in the shower. That's not possible. Oh it's great to
(19:52):
sing in the shower. It's a good place to warm up.
You have all that moisture. You know you're in fact,
you might become a better singer by singing in this
Maybe that I mean as your practice. That more I
think about that the thing that you're most proud of
having achieved in your life, other than let's say, raising
two very talented young women your daughters. What would you
say your your most achieved that's given you most pride?
(20:14):
Is it coming from very modest circumstances to becoming one
of the most famous people in the world in the
opera world, or what would you say it is? Well,
I do share with you this extraordinary wonder at the
realm of possibilities that we have as Americans because, um,
some of my relatives were literally coal miners in Pennsylvania.
(20:35):
And I have sat next to Prince Charles and next
to the King of Sweden at dinner parties and at
various performances, and I always stop and say, isn't this amazing?
And literally in two generations that I have this, this
ability to travel the world and experience every place I
(20:56):
go um at the most extraordinary level. And the legacy
that you would like people to um think about you,
let's say, twenty years from now, when you people look back,
I think I really expanded the possibilities for the singers
who came after me by singing in multiple genre, by
singing jazz, by singing, making a rock album, now singing
in music theater. Um. When I started, people discouraged that
(21:19):
very heavily. They said, no, you're going to ruin your legacy.
You will, um, you, you, you will ruin the way
in which you're viewed critically. You must not step out
of the box. In fact, the more specialized you are,
the better. And I just thought, I, I'm too curious,
I want to try new things, So I just ignored
that advice. When you're an opera, when you go out
(21:42):
for a boutt can go on for ten minutes, twenty minutes.
How long do you go out before you realize it's
finally time to leave the stage and bowing and opera
is an art form unto itself. It's another performance, and
some people do it extremely well, and the audience loves it.
They love it, you know, I sort of forced. I
had friends who would yell at me through my whole career.
(22:03):
Stay on stage. The audience wants to show you their love,
their appreciation. So um, it didn't come supernaturally to me.
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