YouSaid · the spoken record

Renee Fleming

lines on the record: 47
first: 2005-11-18
most recent: 2005-11-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thank you. It's been a joy You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio 4.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I always say coffee is my absolute luxury, and it's also a forbidden luxury because caffeine actually dries the voice out a little bit, so I'm not supposed to. Every time I go visit my ears, nose, and throat doctor, he says, stop with the coffee. But I love it”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a real help, thank you. I would you see Swis and the Witch in the wardrobe, or the Chronicles of Narnia, because we all have these formative experiences, and I can still remember the moment in third grade when the librarian put the book in my little hot hand and said I think you'll enjoy this. I remember that very moment. The book really captured my imagination and made me a fanatical reader. Forever on”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll tell you, that's a hard question because I can't choose a singer. There are too many singers I love. I mean a classical singer. So I would have to say it would be something from Joni Mitchell. So it would be Joni Mitchell's river, not mine. That would be the”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah No problem, and Mauritio Pellini recently just completely bowled me over. You know, if I hear something that makes me want to sit up on the edge of my chair and even better stand up and shout, then that's a great performer. And this is one of my favorite examples of that.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah You know, that is such a wonderful thing. I mean, I literally have to be standing in the middle of Lincoln Center in Tower Records to have people come up and say, I love your work.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I am. I'm tall. I'm big boned, and I have a wide face. I mean, there are a lot of things about me. As somebody said to me when I was at the tender age of 17, you have a large face. You look great on stage, which I thought, oh no, you know, but in fact it's definitely a positive.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I was just going to say thanks a lot. No, no, but when you're unusual to slim down, you're unusual, aren't you? Well, you know, there's really no truth to that. What I would say is that”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's not so bad now. It used to be terrible, in fact, because I was only singing opera, and so I was so solidly booked five years in advance that there was no room for anything else, and I used to squeeze it in any way and just be harried and overworked.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock have been jazz instrumentalists I adore, but this song really just grabs me. There's something about the way in a kind of a molloresque or Straussian way, the way this tune continues to build on itself and transpose and modulate ever upwards. And I just, every time I hear this, it takes me to some other place.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have to be creative. I mean, I'm singing Traviata with Placido Domingo's company in LA this coming fall, and it will be taped for television and therefore DVD. I'm just happy to be having it at all. I can look at it in my oldest years and say I did that someday. Sure.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Opera repertoire is the most difficult thing right now to have recorded because it's so incredibly expensive and is such a specialist item so few people buy complete recordings.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they always say about her that she's in a sense written for three different voices, and very few people suit them all well. But she's so sympathetic, it's so well written, it's just such a fantastic role to play the audience loves her, I love her. I'm doing her three more times in the coming year, so I can't wait.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've had sort of an unusual trajectory in that as I've grown technically my voice has gotten higher rather than lower. You know, I should be singing heavier repertoire now when in fact roles like Traviata and Manon have only become possible in the last six or seven years. And it's because my technique has improved so much. So that's the opposite of what usually happens for singers.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, so I'm in a period of real luxury and real growth right now. This is the great soprano Gabriella Benachova singing Rusalka's song to the moon from the Forschak opera, the song to the moon is my own signature piece. It's the Arya that not only am I probably most known for, but it's also the one that launched me that gave me all of my early opportunities. And it wasn't until I chose the Sorry, I wasn't getting anywhere. I wasn't really having luck in auditions. I won competitions with it and won engagements with it. So I said, aha, we're bound. And I first recorded the ARIA with Shulti, Serge Shulti, who was incredibly instrumental in giving me all of my biggest breaks here in Europe.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I did walk on. I mean, I forced myself to go on, and the people around me forced me to go on. I would have liked to have stopped, and I came very close to stopping singing at that time. I thought it's been lovely. I've already sung in all of the great opera houses in the world and achieved so much, and I think I'm just going to retire now and do something different, because I can't take the pressure anymore. Well, there was a little voice in me that said, Do you know you've worked really hard for this? It's not been easy, and are you sure you want to give up”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. See, the problem was that this engagement came in the middle of a very tough year. I had too many new roles back to back, too much pressure. It was the same year also that I was my husband and I were getting a divorce in the same period. And it was shortly after that that I developed crippling stage right which took me almost a year to recover from.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well, we certainly in the circles that I've always sung in are not used to operate as a blood sport. We're not indoctrinated to that kind of point of view. And in Italy and in many theaters in Italy, that's the norm and has been the norm for many, many years. I mean, Leila Gensher came to the performance and afterwards she said to me, she said, oh, that was nothing in my day. Oh, I see. They could really boo. But for me it was traumatic. I had never experienced it before, and I was contested by a very small group of people, but a very vocal group of people.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For some audience members, it didn't for me, I mean because I was attracted to it immediately and I loved it immediately. And some pieces are very dense. I don't love all new music. I mean, I don't want to, I like something to have a character that appeals to me and some things I find, I call them academic in a sense because they're so intellectual. I don't really enjoy music that's from the neck up only.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but oh so wonderful So I have to say I've always loved new music I fell in love with every new piece that I really loved as a student was contemporary American piece”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“George Crumb, wrote apparition for Jandagaitani, who was my voice teacher when I studied the Aspen Music Festival. But I just find these pieces very haunting. It's a Walt Whitman poetry about the death of Abraham Lincoln, and they're all about death, but they're evocative in a sense that they make death into a beautiful, welcoming, relaxing place, a place that one wants to sink into.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And for Mozart in general, Mozart requires a sort of pristine perfection and clarity, and it's a very naked repertoire. Every singer is different, but for me, that is the most frightening thing, is that sense of exposure and of having to express something that's very intimate.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. You know, we talk about head voice and chess voice and mouth resonance, and these are all kind of threaded together throughout from high to low to ideally make a very even sound. We don't want to have these obvious register breaks or yodels. We want to have everything be nice and even. For high voices, it's particularly difficult, which is why tenors are so popular. We know that every time they go out and sing a high C, the potential is there for them to crack or for it to go really wrong. And that's why it's so exciting.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, for Hine Notes exactly. It's finding the right space. You know, if you open your mouth in a much more vertical place, what happens if you look at a mirror? You'll see that actually the back of your mouth closes off. So this kind of square opening, in a sense, gives one the real space for resonance. It's the cavities, the sinus cavities, and the head and the mouth and the chest. Then that's how the sound is created. It actually happens in the resonance.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's both. Strauss loved the soprano voice above all and wrote so much glorious music for the soprano voice, and these are my favorite concert pieces. I never tire of them, and they have an actual physical effect on me when I sing them. My breathing slows down. And by the end of them, I definitely feel this incredible sense of calm.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh I love her voice she also changed the face of Hausraus has sung. She Maria Collis are two artists who not only came and were great singers, but they forever changed how we sing that repertoire that they sang and how we hear that repertoire.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, she's tough on everyone. I mean, you know, she's tough on everyone. What happened in that class was that I got a little bit confused. The problem with masterclasses is that somebody famous walks in, imparts all kinds of information, and for young, a really young singer, this can create more kind of confusion because then this famous person leaves and the singer is left to kind of sort through the information and try to make it work. And it took me a long time to incorporate the things I'd learned from her into my singing. It took a while.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was only twenty three, I mean it was kind of too soon in a sense to be working with someone of that stature. But what we would do is get up and sing every day, and she imparted a lot of interpretive information. So it was an interesting experience as part of an incredibly important and crucial year.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I mean through you. The beauty of that is that it bought me more time because I had a lot of technical flaws. I really had I gotten opportunities at a younger age, I'm sure I wouldn't be here today because I wouldn't have been able to withstand the pressure and my voice wasn't worked out yet so I needed that time to develop.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I just didn't understand that the real object of an audition was to go in and do what you do best. I thought if I do what I do best no one will be impressed because it's not difficult. I mean, it was so kind of a misunderstood aspect of my training at that time. So I would go in and sing things that I really couldn't quite master.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Programme for young singers. Oh, yes. I had a kind of funny in retrospect. But I thought I could prepare Ari Fus, which is Pamina Zaria from the Magic Flute in a week. So I was a quick study. But, you know, I've since learned that learning music quickly doesn't mean that you have the nerve to get up and do it. So I really white-knuckled my way through that whole performance and my voice shook and my throat tightened up and I got to, it was so painful because I could see the faces of my friends and family in the audience because this was in my hometown and they all, you know, you could see that they were just dying for me. And even the pianist said, you know, he wanted to stand up and say, we're going to stop now. We'll come back another year. Thank you. She can do better than this.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sarah Vaughan was the first jazz singer that I fell madly in love with, and I got to hear her sing live a couple of times, and at one concert I was yelling out so many requests that she finally said, that's enough for you, honey, which I took as a huge compliment. She spoke to I you know, and I've got the world on a string was the first song in a sense that really hooked me. And I became a fanatic, a cerevon fanatic. The other thing I'll say about her is that on her very early recordings, which are entirely different than this, this is late, she has a much higher pristine perfection to her singing. She could have been the great operatic contralto of her time. She had a truly gorgeous voice. Well, and this song is The Epitome of Swing. If anybody ever says that swings, you remember this piece because this is it. Good start.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Um I would never give up I've worked so hard on it and I love the music and also I get to sing the music of 400 years and not fifty years you know it's so I can do it all I mean that's the beauty of it but I might someday start doing this again when I can't sing high seas anymore then I'll go back to Joe's pup”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that was amazing. He turned it down in the end. Yeah, I was too afraid to move to New York and to tour and all of that. It was too frightening. But it was just coming back to this, making the recording, having a couple of performances, and by the third or fourth time suddenly I think well, right, if I hear it, I'm going to do it. I'll just, you know, and that's the freedom of it. We have to reproduce faithfully what's on the page in classical music. All of the interpretive choices we make have to be subtle. Whereas in jazz, anything goes.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know what, I really felt if I was going to do a project like this, I didn't want to use my classical sound. You know, we've all heard that of people who are opera singers trying to sing pop songs. When I was a student, I actually sang with a jazz trio for two and a half years every weekend in my college town. We were the hit of the whole town. I mean, the place was packed. You couldn't actually hear us for the noise of the talking, but never mind. Growing up in a musical household, it was jazz that became my own discovery. And I thought, no, this is a place I can go and have music be mine.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I should react. What did she think? She didn't react to me directly, but somebody else played it for her and said that she liked it. So I said, great, I can sleep at night.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Joni Mitchell, I discovered as an eighteen year old and I still remember the CD being handled to me. Well, of course, it was an LP at that time. The hissing of summer lawns, and she has remained my touchstone ever since my musical touchstone because she explored so much music. And I chose my own recording actually of her song River, and I finally met her this year, almost fainted, and I was terrified to meet her because I thought, oh my God, if she's not nice to me, I'm going to have her nervous breakdown on the spot.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Miss Perfect. Miss Perfect, yeah. Which I hated. I wanted to be bad. I wanted to wear nylons and smoke in the bathroom and fight. I just thought that the renegades were the most glamorous and free spirits and all of that. And I was very bound by what a good girl should. You”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, music teaching doesn't bring in that much. No, and also where my father first taught in Pennsylvania, you know, his salary was so small that it was supplemented. What we ate was supplemented with his hunting and fishing. People think of venison as a delicacy, but for us it was the way we had protein.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Music teachers But what kind of instrument or They were both singers, so you can tell I had absolutely no choice. This was, of course, going to be my life whether I wanted it or not. And you sang together in the evenings? Oh, we sang all the time together. I mean, my mother kind of envisioned us as a sort of family fontrap. So we performed in trios, quartets. Do you invite the neighbors round? Oh, you know, the neighbors came around. I mean, we didn't even have to invite them.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're ten and thirteen. And you live together in New York. So I sing opera at the Met and now probably two a year. But you take them to school in the morning. Well, I take them to the bus. And you will. Do all of those normal things needed a sort of permanent job at the match? Well, that's kind of my situation. And then I try to be in Europe every summer as much as I can be, and they're with me, and they love it. But take me back to your childhood in Rochester, upstate New York. Parents were”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing much more these days, you sort of stop. Houses of the world. This is a kind of Yes, it is. Well, it's actually, there are two reasons for doing that. I haven't stopped, but I do much, much less now. I mean, I could spend my entire season every year only singing opera, but then I would only be in five cities. Whereas with the recital repertoire and the touring that I do now, I can be in 30 cities. So it enables me to travel the world a little bit more. But it also enables you to be at home more. Doesn't it? Absolutely. And that's, of course, the first priority, which is that I get to go right back home to my girls because during the school year, I really can't be away very much.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly you can now do that, I am quite sure. No, no, no, not like her in my dreams, but I have a high sea of sorts.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the voice of Leantine Price and everything she stands for in a way not only the sumptuous sound, but the fact that she broke ground in so many ways, you know, as an African American singer who struggled to be allowed to perform on so many great stages. But the sound itself, I mean, I used to sit on the subway when I was this Juilliard student and just think if I only had her high sea There was that high sea.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I had, you know, the kernel of an instrument, and I was certainly a natural musician. I mean, being raised by music teacher parents means that music was the language that I learned before speech. However, I was shy, introverted. I spent a lot of time reading, making crafts alone in my room. I was anything but a performance. So you didn't have this ambition. You didn't say when I grow up, I want to be a son. Oh God, no anything but I didn't enjoy performing at all. I loved music, though, and eventually my love for music really won out, and I taught myself how to perform.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And just hadn't even met him before. He walked straight on the teddy. Yes, yes. In fact, the soprano who was singing opening night had heard her back, and so they said, Renee, you're on. I had never done the role before, was begging for rehearsal. So I ran up on stage. We did this confrontation scene where Placido was throwing me on the ground and slapping me. I mean, all of these incredibly intense things. And so when it was all over and my knees were completely shaking, he said, Oh hello, I'm Placido Domingo. It was the most extraordinary experience.”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“in lord of the rings, the part of the Countess in the marriage. That she now thinks top of her profession of the great American. It's true, but the thing is, it takes one impresario to take a chance and say I think this girl has talent I'm going to give her an opportunity, and I was literally thrown onto stage at two weeks' notice. Many of my opportunities were last minute filling in for someone, and this was one of those instances. And it was trial by fire. And it launched me. Exactly. But did you know in that moment it was going to make or break you? Is that what you felt? No, I had, you know, we never have that kind of perspective when we're really just trying to survive a particular experience. But that was the greatest one. You mentioned those standing in at the last...”
2005-11-18 · Desert Island Discs · Renee Fleming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source