Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Renee Fleming has a powerful effect on people. Conductor Sir
Speaker 1: George Shoalty described the opera singer's voice as double cream.
Speaker 1: Garrison Keeler said she made his nostrils twitch. New York
Speaker 1: chef Daniel Blue created a signature dessert to honor her.
Speaker 1: But Renee Fleming is down to earth. When the People's Diva,
Speaker 1: as she's been called, went to Paris to rehearse Handle's Alcina,
Speaker 1: one of her favorite roles, she spent most of the
Speaker 1: first week looking for playgrounds for her two young daughters.
Speaker 1: Renee grew up in Rochester, New York, where both her
Speaker 1: parents were high school music teachers. During the first two
Speaker 1: years of her life, while in her playpen, Renee would
Speaker 1: listen while her mother gave singing lessons. A few years later,
Speaker 1: Renee organized a barbershop trio with her younger sister and brother.
Speaker 1: One might say Renee Fleming was born into music. Often
Speaker 1: refer to myself as an indentured servant because we grew
Speaker 1: up with it. My parents were both We all sang
Speaker 1: all the time. You take a family cross country trip
Speaker 1: and be singing the road signs and in harmony, and
Speaker 1: I thought everybody did that. I just like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is what families do. Your friends would get in
Speaker 1: the car with your family and it was like throw
Speaker 1: on with these crazy flemings, exactly fleming and singing to
Speaker 1: the trees, missing to the exit signs, and and we
Speaker 1: talked about singing. Did you feel like this was your
Speaker 1: way to communicate with your own parents? Well, interestingly, my
Speaker 1: dad was a big jazz fan. My mother didn't bring
Speaker 1: music home much at all. She wanted to break from
Speaker 1: it when she came home. Other than when we performed,
Speaker 1: she prepared us. You know, I think her idea was
Speaker 1: that we would be the next one traps. You know.
Speaker 1: My father, thank god, put the kabushion then and said,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Um. Let me guess your mother
Speaker 1: was the competitive one. She She was very type AI,
Speaker 1: you know, she's check and my my grandmother and my
Speaker 1: aunts were all like this. I mean they would come
Speaker 1: over and they just the work ethic was unbelievable. I
Speaker 1: think I work hard. No no, no no. They used
Speaker 1: to look at me and say, you know, Renee, you're
Speaker 1: you really need to step it up. You know, and
Speaker 1: I see myself doing the same thing with my two daughters,
Speaker 1: so I can't I sort of can't help it. But
Speaker 1: the music thing, you know, it was just so natural
Speaker 1: for us, and my way of rebelling against it was
Speaker 1: to find my own music. So I became a composer
Speaker 1: in middle school, started writing songs and then I played piano,
Speaker 1: I played guitar. And what kind of music did you write,
Speaker 1: you're like, John, Yeah, it was sort of singer what
Speaker 1: we call now singer songwriter, But I also wrote art
Speaker 1: songs that I actually notated and wrote out that other
Speaker 1: people sang. In that time, women weren't particularly encouraged to
Speaker 1: be composers. In a different setting, that might have been
Speaker 1: the direction I would have gone in, because I loved
Speaker 1: it and it suited my temperament much better than performing.
Speaker 1: I was so shy. Performing was so far away from
Speaker 1: whoever he was. A specific opera, the first opera, if
Speaker 1: you can recall, because I remember the first movie I
Speaker 1: went to see in a movie theater. What was the
Speaker 1: first opera that you became you know, I would say, gosh, sure, Angelica.
Speaker 1: This is what I remember because my mother performed it
Speaker 1: and we were in the first row, and this is
Speaker 1: the Eastman Theater. So first of all, I was incredibly
Speaker 1: impressed by the theater, this massive chandelier, you know, all
Speaker 1: the velvet. I mean I took up violin because of
Speaker 1: the velvet in the case. So there were nothing if
Speaker 1: not superficial. I guess you know. I didn't really know
Speaker 1: anything about the story, but she was crying, and she
Speaker 1: was crying because she was singing about, you know, her
Speaker 1: her dead baby and wanting to be joined with her
Speaker 1: baby again. And you looking at her three children in
Speaker 1: front of her. Somehow, I think that really impressed me.
Speaker 1: Did you ever imagine at that time it mean the
Speaker 1: middle school and you're seeing this piece, that that would
Speaker 1: be a path for you, that you would end up
Speaker 1: where you are now. Gosh, no, nobody really asked kids
Speaker 1: in those days, what do you want exactly? What would
Speaker 1: you like to do? You just went along. I know
Speaker 1: so many people in my generation who applied to three
Speaker 1: colleges and never gave it much thought. And really, you know,
Speaker 1: the way we raised children now is worlds apart from
Speaker 1: how we were raised. How do you feel? How do
Speaker 1: you feel? My parents couldn't give a damn? How I
Speaker 1: felt no, really, the only thing I thought that I
Speaker 1: wanted to be was the president. So there was i'd say,
Speaker 1: a colonel of ambition there in the world I was in.
Speaker 1: It was, you know, doctor lawyer or a few of
Speaker 1: a more working class background, a job that gave you
Speaker 1: a security and a pension, the Long Island Railroad, the
Speaker 1: police department, the fire department. You know, you learned very
Speaker 1: quickly to choose from the menu. Actor was not on
Speaker 1: the menu, the men that was submitted to me. Well,
Speaker 1: I wanted to music again, like my parents, So that's
Speaker 1: another thing you did. You followed your parents because you
Speaker 1: couldn't think of anything else to do. And then when
Speaker 1: the singing became more interesting, and particularly jazz um, when
Speaker 1: I really found myself in through singing with it in
Speaker 1: a club every weekend for two and a half years.
Speaker 1: Then my parents got nervous. Oh, it's so hard, it's
Speaker 1: too competitive. What happens when you're you're writing songs, popular
Speaker 1: music or whatever, you know what you said, singer songwriter,
Speaker 1: whether it's Karl King or what have you, and you're
Speaker 1: singing jazz in nightclubs in Rochester, they're knowing Potsdam where
Speaker 1: I went to undergraduate school is Potsdam a hotbed of jazz.
Speaker 1: It's a college hotbed and the drinking age was twenty one.
Speaker 1: So yes, so we all spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: in clubs. In this particular Algiers Pub had very high
Speaker 1: quality jazz all the time. And the guys that I
Speaker 1: worked with are are all working musicians. It was an
Speaker 1: extraordinary education for me in many many ways. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's how we learned. That's how I was able to
Speaker 1: embrace performing good Because Illinois Ja KD heard me sing
Speaker 1: in pot Salmon said why don't you come on the road,
Speaker 1: we come to New York and cats Yes, it's great
Speaker 1: tenor saxophone player was really going to put me on
Speaker 1: the map as a jazz a singer. And I just
Speaker 1: knew I didn't have the courage. You could have been
Speaker 1: a popular singer. What where do you take the term
Speaker 1: you're saying, I'm going to operate? Is it now? Had
Speaker 1: I grown up in New York City, the singer songwriter
Speaker 1: thing might have opened, doors might have opened. I mean
Speaker 1: I sang on television in high school winning some talent show,
Speaker 1: literally playing a song that I wrote, making the decision
Speaker 1: to go on undergraduate school. That's sort of solidified. My
Speaker 1: graduate school was where so you went from you went
Speaker 1: back home. Yeah. Then I tried to pursue jazz then,
Speaker 1: and that didn't work. Despite the fact that Eastman had
Speaker 1: a phenomenal jazz department, I just couldn't get in. I
Speaker 1: couldn't break in. So, you know, it was really circumstance
Speaker 1: that pushed me towards classical music, and eventually I really
Speaker 1: embraced it. And the other thing is I realized it
Speaker 1: was much more suited to my temperament. I liked being
Speaker 1: in the practice room. I liked studying. I enjoyed wrestling
Speaker 1: with this instrumental harder. I don't know that it was harder,
Speaker 1: but it was more internal kind of cerebral work. You know.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about jazz or anything popular, you see,
Speaker 1: it was a very personality driven and I just didn't
Speaker 1: have that. I think I do now. Interestingly, I've come
Speaker 1: out of my show. I mean when I tell people
Speaker 1: I was extremely shy that nobody believes me. Now that's
Speaker 1: the thing that people have to overcome. Yes, exactly. You know,
Speaker 1: I found a lot of comedians to be extraordinarily serious
Speaker 1: and and draws withdrawn sometimes, So yeah, I think sometimes
Speaker 1: we overcome things by going after the very thing that
Speaker 1: really eludes us. So certainly in my case that was it.
Speaker 1: I would observe friends who were comfortable performing, and I
Speaker 1: would just try to act like them, So that was
Speaker 1: that worked. It's an impersonation. Someone said to me, how
Speaker 1: do you perform in the theater, Like why is the
Speaker 1: theater so soothing to you? And I say, because I
Speaker 1: know that for two and a half hours, you know
Speaker 1: exactly where I'm going to be, exactly what I'm going
Speaker 1: to say, exactly what you're going to say, and exactly
Speaker 1: how a roomful of people are going to react to
Speaker 1: what I say. And you don't feel performance pressure because
Speaker 1: I had terrible stage right. I do feel the pressure
Speaker 1: in rehearsal. I feel the pressure to unearthed, to get
Speaker 1: down to it and get the work done. And if
Speaker 1: I feel that we got the work done, then it's orgasmic,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I go out there and put it
Speaker 1: the only thing I'm like, well, how's everybody doing? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, really, I'm very happy, comfortable. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: they're gonna like it. If I go out there and
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit hesitating because I'm thinking I don't
Speaker 1: think we got it. But you do two years at
Speaker 1: Eastman and the graduate degree there. Then what happens? And
Speaker 1: I went to Juilliard did POSTGRADU I could be a
Speaker 1: doctor or a lawyer who as long as I was
Speaker 1: Why Juilliard Juilliard at the time the American Opercenter, so
Speaker 1: now the Juilliard Opercenter. I believe it was a post
Speaker 1: graduate program. I was cast as Mozetta in Lubo m
Speaker 1: So I came here to sing a role. You get
Speaker 1: free lessons, coaching, all of the support that we couldn't
Speaker 1: otherwise afford. You know, you're a beginner. And I worked
Speaker 1: in rocket Feller Plaza for a law firm, pay my
Speaker 1: rent and everything, and it was a great year. It
Speaker 1: was a phenomenal year. Say to yourself, why didn't I
Speaker 1: do this sooner? Yeah? Yes, because I was so happy
Speaker 1: and I was running around the city like a maniac,
Speaker 1: so active. And then I took a full right grant
Speaker 1: studying in Germany and that was hard. Were you there
Speaker 1: in Frankfort? It was important. It was probably one of
Speaker 1: the most crucial pieces in my education because it was
Speaker 1: so challenging. Number One, I didn't speak a word of German.
Speaker 1: When I went there, I was in the whole schield
Speaker 1: for musique and was not accepted into the opera department,
Speaker 1: which was very disappointing to me at the time. I
Speaker 1: cried the whole way there, literally sobbing yes, and my
Speaker 1: boyfriend at the time, who became my husband, said well,
Speaker 1: you know, don't not go because of me, and I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, God, that would be the furthest thing from
Speaker 1: my mind. I was so kind of self possessed, but
Speaker 1: also clueless about the choices I was making. That's why
Speaker 1: I wrote a book for young singers, because if young
Speaker 1: singers are any one of them like I was, you
Speaker 1: just don't know what you're getting into. But I was
Speaker 1: also very lucky because that year turned out to be
Speaker 1: a very formative experience. I mean, learning to speak fluent German.
Speaker 1: How many languages do you speak fluently well? I studied
Speaker 1: French in high school like many of us did. That was,
Speaker 1: you know, the language. Paris is my second home, and
Speaker 1: I sang there every year for a long time, so
Speaker 1: my French is when I'm there, it picks up again
Speaker 1: and it's good. But German is even more fluent and consistent.
Speaker 1: During that year, you learned to speaking fluently in that
Speaker 1: one year. Well, you know, I love the study of
Speaker 1: learning and of memory, because what I've discovered is that
Speaker 1: at the end of that year my German was okay,
Speaker 1: it was good, you know. But every year, every time
Speaker 1: I go back, it gets better and I don't have
Speaker 1: to speak a word of German in between. So the brain,
Speaker 1: those neurons keep firing. Then you come back to Julia, Yes,
Speaker 1: and I come back to Juilliard. I tried to stay
Speaker 1: in Germany. I tried to stay there and get work.
Speaker 1: No one would have me, so I came back in
Speaker 1: my career started here. Then how well, I had a
Speaker 1: rough couple of years of sort of no man's land,
Speaker 1: which is very common with singers between education and the
Speaker 1: start of career. It's very common for all of us, really,
Speaker 1: all musicians, you know. And there's this catch twenty two
Speaker 1: where you can't get management unless they can go here,
Speaker 1: you perform, but you can't get a job if you
Speaker 1: don't get managed. In the acting world, okay, call me
Speaker 1: when you're in a show, and that's the manager you're
Speaker 1: trying to get. So competitions were the thing that helped me.
Speaker 1: And when the main competitions exactly for me. It was
Speaker 1: the men competition. It took me three times, but I
Speaker 1: finally won. All of a sudden the doors opened. But
Speaker 1: it took about a year and a half. I'd say
Speaker 1: things went slowly. And the first paid, legit professional job
Speaker 1: you have was doing what the first real engagement was
Speaker 1: in Houston Grand Opera, and it was the Marriage of Figaro,
Speaker 1: and that really put me on the map, and that
Speaker 1: described that so important. I had never sung the opera
Speaker 1: in Italian, I'd sung it in English. So I went
Speaker 1: to rehearse with really seasoned professionals, I mean people who
Speaker 1: were big opera stars already, and I was a beginner.
Speaker 1: You know. The first day of rehearsal Thomas Allen, in particular,
Speaker 1: Sir Thomas Allen, He's got such an intelligence and uh
Speaker 1: sophistication about his portrayal of all of these Mozart in
Speaker 1: here heroes. He's still performing I think at the Royal Opera.
Speaker 1: I was just jelly at the end of the first
Speaker 1: rehearsal because I thought I can't even keep up with him.
Speaker 1: Mozart Rich Sativa is really hard. Imagine doing very quick
Speaker 1: dialogue and a foreign language that you don't speak. Really
Speaker 1: and I learned. You know, when you're young, you just
Speaker 1: you just you do what you have to do to
Speaker 1: keep up. I lifted the car off my baby because
Speaker 1: I had to lift the car from my David exactly.
Speaker 1: And when you get these opportunities, you have to rise
Speaker 1: to the occasion and take a risk and get out
Speaker 1: there and really make it work, or you don't get
Speaker 1: the opportunity again. You know, it's so competitive the field.
Speaker 1: I think all my horseback riding and doing horse shows
Speaker 1: as a kid really prepared me for that. And when
Speaker 1: when the curtain, I don't need to be so molodramatic,
Speaker 1: but the world you live in that kind of lends
Speaker 1: itself this. When the curtain comes down and the shows,
Speaker 1: the first show is over, how did you feel? Well?
Speaker 1: You know, it's unfortunately too long ago from you hotely
Speaker 1: remember that, but you know, I can tell you there
Speaker 1: was a euphoria in those early experiences, a sense of
Speaker 1: happiness and relief when I would go from one engagement
Speaker 1: to the other. You know, our world, we never stop,
Speaker 1: so there's no sort of you do a project and
Speaker 1: then you take a break. It's just after that it's
Speaker 1: a blur. It's like It's all one big episode of
Speaker 1: a TV show to me, Now, yeh, what was it
Speaker 1: like doing? I'll go, God, don't you know? And when
Speaker 1: I watched the film, I remember events in my life
Speaker 1: at that time. A scene will come on and I'll go,
Speaker 1: I remember that day. That was the day of my
Speaker 1: contractor called me, tell me a pipe burst at my
Speaker 1: house in East Hampton. You know, I don't really do
Speaker 1: your roles and experiences. Somehow, if they didn't parallel your life,
Speaker 1: they were helpful in some way. Two things. One is
Speaker 1: more tangible than the other. Someone Melanie Griffith, years ago
Speaker 1: said to me that every role you play is the
Speaker 1: chance to bury that part of yourself that you don't like.
Speaker 1: And the other thing I find is that when God
Speaker 1: wants to make fun of me and to mock me,
Speaker 1: I'll get a script and what's going on with that
Speaker 1: character is exactly what's going on, right, And I'll read
Speaker 1: the script and it's almost God to say to me, see,
Speaker 1: stupid it looks when it's on paper. I have felt
Speaker 1: that a lot of times when I've been in any
Speaker 1: kind of conflict or struggle. Some how the repertoire that
Speaker 1: I'm performing has just coincidentally mirrored it in a way
Speaker 1: that's been healing. Let's say healing. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and I'm talking with singer Renee Fleming. More in a minute.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the
Speaker 1: thing today with Renee Fleming and your work, because in
Speaker 1: my work it's not this way. You can't do what
Speaker 1: you do unless you summon up some reservoir of the deepest,
Speaker 1: deepest passion to sing these roles effectively. To think of
Speaker 1: a role you've you've performed where even you sat there
Speaker 1: and go, God, this is killing me. Well it came
Speaker 1: out of you, like you couldn't believe it came out
Speaker 1: of you. You know there, Well, there are two sides
Speaker 1: of it. One is the vocal. One one is this
Speaker 1: feeling that you know I'm in the right place at
Speaker 1: the right time to be singing this and and you know,
Speaker 1: well the voice is such an evolving instrument. So when
Speaker 1: I sang Tais, for instance, at the met some years ago,
Speaker 1: and had these spectacular costumes from Christian Loqua, you just
Speaker 1: thought the stars have aligned to make this role of
Speaker 1: suit me perfectly. Right now. I love singing in French.
Speaker 1: I love Massinee, the way it lies, the character, the
Speaker 1: fact that you know, the psychological drama and this opera
Speaker 1: where these two people completely changed places with each other.
Speaker 1: That was a case certainly where I just thought, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was going to do it again, and somebody
Speaker 1: stopped and said, do you want to sing it again
Speaker 1: in five years if it's not as good as it
Speaker 1: was this time? And I said, you're right, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to I'm not going to risk that. Oh it was.
Speaker 1: It was perfect. I mean it was. I couldn't do
Speaker 1: it better. So it's not very often I can say
Speaker 1: that I couldn't do it better. Someone else maybe could
Speaker 1: do it better. Different It was the best that I
Speaker 1: could do. But you said, there's two things, the voice
Speaker 1: and what else the voice and then also what you
Speaker 1: bring artistically to anything. You know, for instance, the Marshall
Speaker 1: Room right now, and Rosencovalier evolves all the time. For me,
Speaker 1: it's not a vocal issue. It's a it's an artistic issue.
Speaker 1: It's who she is, what she's grappling with. Is she manic, depressive?
Speaker 1: Is she's simply lonely. She's one of the most interesting
Speaker 1: characters in all of opera for women. I mean, how
Speaker 1: she was created by two men, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I'm grateful to have her. You know the other thing,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you feel this squeeze, but you may.
Speaker 1: We're squeezed between what's kind of commercial and popular opera
Speaker 1: hits artistic. How was that changed in the opera world
Speaker 1: and you're during your career, Well, there are two parts
Speaker 1: to it, because there's one, there's there's the titles. And
Speaker 1: I wasn't born to sing unfortunately, Mad and Butterfly Tusca.
Speaker 1: You know, bo m. My voice isn't I'm not a
Speaker 1: lyrical spinto. I'm a lyric soprano, so my voice is
Speaker 1: too light for those parts. I'm fortunately, if I could
Speaker 1: sing those roles, then the success I've had with the
Speaker 1: public would have transferred over to the repertoire. Did you
Speaker 1: did you try to do them? No, that kind of
Speaker 1: assignation happens in your world. People that are experts, who
Speaker 1: are technical experts tell you that's not your repertoire, right well,
Speaker 1: and in trying to sing that repertoire, I would have
Speaker 1: harmed my voice, or at the at the very least
Speaker 1: just not been hurt. We're not amplified, and you know,
Speaker 1: that's a very important distinction between what we do and
Speaker 1: what everyone else does. So to try and build a
Speaker 1: career on titles that aren't sort of at the heart
Speaker 1: of the oposite people love is more challenging. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, the trend that I've seen since I started
Speaker 1: singing twenty years ago, you know, plus, is that people
Speaker 1: have been more interested in learning about pieces they didn't
Speaker 1: know and experiencing pieces they didn't know, as opposed to
Speaker 1: going to the umteen Zaida for instance. The other squeeze
Speaker 1: that I feel is virtuosity versus artistry, because people will
Speaker 1: go to opera, I mean the three tenors case in point,
Speaker 1: for thrills, for vocal, for the thrill of what the
Speaker 1: human voice is capable of producing, and for tenors and sopranos,
Speaker 1: and it's really for us. It's a high note. It's
Speaker 1: all about the high note. You know, are you going
Speaker 1: to break glass? Are you going to is it going
Speaker 1: to give us shivers? Are we going to cry? Because
Speaker 1: you've just throbbed on that high sea to kind of
Speaker 1: figure out how to program so that one gets some
Speaker 1: of that without you kind of really using up your
Speaker 1: principle and using up what it is that you have
Speaker 1: and or interesting them in music that doesn't have that,
Speaker 1: music that's more about poetry and prose, and in turning
Speaker 1: a phrase that's more subtle. I've gone back and forth
Speaker 1: between those two things my whole career. What's one of
Speaker 1: the more popular in your mind in your range, oh, traviata?
Speaker 1: I guess in the in the greatest tests category exactly.
Speaker 1: And what is one that you might have been doubtful
Speaker 1: about or at the very least indifferent about. That was
Speaker 1: you were approached and it turned out to be a
Speaker 1: wonderful experience, But there was more esoteric I think rode
Speaker 1: Linda Handles roteal Linda. I. You know, I was drawn
Speaker 1: to her because of the character, the story. She's a mother,
Speaker 1: she's courageous, she's strong. It's a masterpiece, this opera. It
Speaker 1: wasn't known they had never been done at the mat
Speaker 1: so some of these titles in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: being given this place that I've had it that meant
Speaker 1: for some time, also give me the opportunity to say
Speaker 1: what about this? Having done a lot of the standard
Speaker 1: repertoire that I could sing, and I've sung fifty four roles.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been saying fifty one. I was right.
Speaker 1: I recounted it was a miscount. Executive opening up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're so you're so unproductive, you're so lazy, exactly, French.
Speaker 1: I have opera audience has changed during your career. I
Speaker 1: think the challenge we face in opera in general, and
Speaker 1: I would say forget opera and classical music is really exposure.
Speaker 1: It used to be that we had exposure obviously in schools.
Speaker 1: We had exposure through churches and through our families. Every
Speaker 1: socially climbing family got a piano and felt that a
Speaker 1: musical education was part on arts education, was part of
Speaker 1: their children's, you know, the betterment of their lives. And
Speaker 1: that you know, it is what it is, it is,
Speaker 1: It is gone. It's just simply people don't feel it's
Speaker 1: relevant anymore. My heart when you say that, But it's true.
Speaker 1: But in the thirty plus years thirty three years now
Speaker 1: I've lived in Manhattan, I've never seen anything like the
Speaker 1: world of opera in terms of the devotion. And they
Speaker 1: don't have the money for these tickets. They don't have
Speaker 1: two hundred bucks to fifty seventy five. You know, some
Speaker 1: because the opera costs money. The sets, the sim the orchestra,
Speaker 1: the most expensive. It's the most expensive arts ticket that
Speaker 1: there is. And yet you see the people that are teachers,
Speaker 1: they put all their chips on this. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I have to come see Renee. How do you feel
Speaker 1: about that? Do you know? I find you listen the bloggers.
Speaker 1: The amount of investment, the emotional investment that people make
Speaker 1: in this art form. It's just it's it's way beyond
Speaker 1: any Yeah but that, but that's what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: off the charts. The passion for better for work. I
Speaker 1: think it's phenomenal. It's funny because I can't understand it.
Speaker 1: I'm too close and I'm too critical, obviously because it's
Speaker 1: my work. I mean, so when I go to the opera,
Speaker 1: I want to be swept away, and sometimes i am.
Speaker 1: I mean I've gone to the opera a couple of
Speaker 1: times where I have literally been sobbing at the end
Speaker 1: and just have to pull myself together. Oh yeah, pee Peekee,
Speaker 1: dumb kills me. Queen of Spades. I am always shocked
Speaker 1: by that acapella men's course at the end, the way
Speaker 1: that operas composed, the music and Tchikovsky's final phrases. It
Speaker 1: just does something amazing to me. I still like living
Speaker 1: in New York? Or is your relationship? Do you know?
Speaker 1: I'm It's funny, I've never felt like New York is
Speaker 1: my home. But it's because we're no Mad's we you know,
Speaker 1: we're I'm very adaptable that way. I mean, I'm home
Speaker 1: wherever I am. You guys travel, and then then the
Speaker 1: classical music world of the symphonic as well as opera,
Speaker 1: you guys travel more all the time. Yeah, all the time.
Speaker 1: And so when I am home, I'm also inundated, you
Speaker 1: know when I because I'm gone so much. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's not so much fun to be here. Um, it
Speaker 1: will be when I get some rest. When you to
Speaker 1: do a show, when you're performing a piece, what's the
Speaker 1: day like for you? Do you have a ritual? A ritual?
Speaker 1: How do you have a ritual when you have little children?
Speaker 1: That's what I was really interested. My Yes, I am
Speaker 1: really consistent about getting up with my kids, no matter
Speaker 1: how late I've been up. So at seven am, I'm up,
Speaker 1: and the kids are seven. I only have one at
Speaker 1: home now, the others in college. So the one at
Speaker 1: home is sixteen and good times, right, good times. I
Speaker 1: have a sixteen year old. It's good times. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's you know, okay, it's another whole story, another whole story,
Speaker 1: mostly good, mostly great. What does she want to do?
Speaker 1: She want to be in the best. She wants to
Speaker 1: sing pop music, that's her real dream. And this kid
Speaker 1: sings all the time. So, um, what's your older one doing?
Speaker 1: She is in college and gender studies and she's not
Speaker 1: exactly sure what she wants to do with that yet.
Speaker 1: A very serious girl. She's in Boston, you know, very gifted,
Speaker 1: and we'll see. So what's the routine then? My routine
Speaker 1: is is not to leave the apartment. That really, that's it.
Speaker 1: I stay home, I stay off the phone. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm phone phobic anyway. I almost never talk on the telephone.
Speaker 1: And my speaking voice is terrible for what I do.
Speaker 1: When you're on the phone, you automatically you don't hear
Speaker 1: your voice very often, and you automatically pressed just a
Speaker 1: little bit. It tires me. It's fatiguing. Um, and I
Speaker 1: get tense, and I don't know, it's it's all in
Speaker 1: my head. Really, it's totally uh, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a made up one less pressure to have and
Speaker 1: the other thing I do, I get a lot of
Speaker 1: work done. I'm actually very productive on performance days because
Speaker 1: that's when I you know, I sit there and I
Speaker 1: work email, you know, studying music whatever, and then you
Speaker 1: go to the theater and do you have us do
Speaker 1: do people in your future of like a warm up?
Speaker 1: You do? Is there a well I know nothing about
Speaker 1: vocal I try to vocalize earlier in the day because
Speaker 1: I find that it's better for me a little bit.
Speaker 1: Just kind of see where it's at. You know. Some
Speaker 1: dicies things drinking, certain things I have to be careful about.
Speaker 1: I love caffeine, you know, I would drink coffee all
Speaker 1: day and I have to be careful about that because
Speaker 1: it's dehydrating. So I'll have my typical so and you
Speaker 1: have to force fluids a little bit, which I hate to.
Speaker 1: So these are the boring things. Not really good people,
Speaker 1: I think are just interested in what kind of the
Speaker 1: discipline is complex? Yeah, most people can't control what they
Speaker 1: eat and drink. There's a little bit of that. Having
Speaker 1: the humidifier on, making sure it's a lot about you know, moisture.
Speaker 1: These are all mucous memoranes. The vocal folds are very
Speaker 1: sensitive and you want to go into that performance with
Speaker 1: them being super healthy and not dried out. We're the
Speaker 1: Olympians of singers, really, and you'll have a three to
Speaker 1: five hour long performance and that takes a lot of
Speaker 1: physical stamina. Yeah, it's a lot of physical stamina. Us
Speaker 1: you're emotionally all over the place, you know, as you said,
Speaker 1: it's a very but it's mainly the amount of sound
Speaker 1: we have to produce to be heard over the orchestra
Speaker 1: and the chorus in a huge hall. That's the thing
Speaker 1: that that is different. And if we sing well, if
Speaker 1: we sing technically well, we should be able to get
Speaker 1: up the next day and sound normal. You know, people
Speaker 1: will go to sports events and scream at you know,
Speaker 1: the other team or even there the people they like
Speaker 1: and their horse the next day. We can't do that.
Speaker 1: We're doing the same thing, but we're doing it in
Speaker 1: a trained way. And you know, it is a hard
Speaker 1: art form to get right. Is there all these elements
Speaker 1: and it's live, but when it's right, it's it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Renee Fleming says she's looking forward to getting some rest,
Speaker 1: although it's not clear when that will come. In addition
Speaker 1: to her busy performance schedule, she recently became the creative
Speaker 1: consultant for the Lyric Opera in Chicago. They just announced
Speaker 1: an upcoming world premier opera based on the bestseller Bell KNTO,
Speaker 1: and she's been advocating for more arts education in schools.
Speaker 1: It's not just for people to be consumers of the artists,
Speaker 1: for them to also participate, find the creative voices, and
Speaker 1: build confidence through participation. YE special thanks to the Metropolitan
Speaker 1: Opera and the Houston Grand Opera for providing archival excerpts
Speaker 1: of Bernade Fleming in performance. This is Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Here's the Thing