Renee Fleming Quotes

Because everything about the voice interests me, I felt it would be fascinating to learn a completely different style of singing.

I don't want to record anything unless it can be great and genuinely interesting.

I was constantly being pushed toward a European ideal of what it means to be a classical or opera singer, let's say in the Renata Tebaldi mode. I reject that.

In a sense, it's less about seeing how high up I can vault than about seeing how deeply I can explore my potential...Ambition for me is about the willingness to work, the ability to mine my own soul fearlessly.

I have not changed with the accomplishments. I've remained the same. If I had changed, great. You know, but I haven't.

My whole career I played these girls sort of 18 to 23.

Being steeped in the process of learning and exploring keeps me from becoming too nervous. Partly it's about not getting bored.

Having to travel so much plays havoc with your personal life.

I was always a very good student.

I'm not a reactionary.

I think singing it when its done well is extremely natural. It feels great.

I've always been inspired by artists who have shown musical and intellectual curiosity and the courage to take risks.

I'm not exactly an angry young person.

I don't like to sing loud.

Everybody's a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. I mean, I've never arrived. I'm still learning all the time.

When a human being without amplification makes a sound that is high and loud, it is almost unworldly.

I think opera has gained a kind of glamorous appeal. It's a live performance that aligns all of the arts, and when it is represented in the media, in film in particular, it is presented as something that is really a special event, whether it's a great date or something that's just hugely romantic.

I learned so many roles so quickly as a young singer, I thought it was time to come back to them and make them better - deeper, more nuanced.

The reason that some singers go on to become great artists has very little to do with their voices, but rather with the fact that they have used their instruments as tools for detailed communication.

Well, any time Im preparing for a performance or even a rehearsal, its as if in a way, like any other athletes, these are muscles that support the vocal cords which are just I believe cartilage. It demands a kind of constant warming up and a constant feeling of where is the voice today.

I have had a very difficult time with stage fright; it undermines your well-being and peace of mind, and it can also threaten your livelihood.

I've lived in New York all my life, and we went to the Mormon Pageant each year in upstate New York. It still is a wonderful production. I remember going and seeing the performance and listening to the music. My father had Mormon Tabernacle Choir music, and we would listen to it and sing with it.

At this stage in my career, I don't have to take any big risks. You want to take a calculated risk, not one that leads to people saying 'yes, but there was that one time when she made that big mistake.' It's always a shame when that happens, especially if you've gotten by for decades without anything hugely tragic.

Your brain has a music room, and evolution would not have gone to the trouble of designing that if it didn't have some benefits. So, that suggests to me that we and our ancestors have had music as a central part of our experience for eons. And we're just beginning to understand how that might be. I think that's fascinating.

We are unique, each human voice, not because we are completely self-generated, but because of who we choose to assemble the countless factors that made us.

Someone once said that there are probably seven naturally good singing days in a year-and those are days you won't be booked. What we must learn is how to sing through all the other days.

We sing with the entire body. The sounds that we make emanate not just from the head, but from the whole heart and soul, and, most important, the gut.

No voice teacher can be all things to all people. You have to gain information from whatever sources you can. You have to listen.

I'm American. I'm eclectic. I'm going to follow my musical passions. And if people don't like it, and it hurts my legacy, I'm not going to worry about that.

An interpretation exists because of what we find between the notes.

I have a noble history of being rejected by a lot of places, only to discover that the one that finally lets me in is in fact the perfect fit.

I would love to do more private concerts.

My philosophy is that the people around us are there doing as much work if not more work behind the scenes and they're the last people you would ever be unkind to, so I hope I'm not a diva off stage.

I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate, very simple and emotional, about that music.

When I sing, the sound is a totally different range, color, all of it. It's all about the breath. You take in a breath and you make a sound.

If I have to hold a note for a long time, I imagine it as moving and spinning, for the note has to have life. In a way, a singer actually refreshes a note with every beat that it's held.

Fostering creativity in children is as important as any other part of the school curriculum because it feeds the soul. A daily dose of creativity helps children imagine a better world and then create it.

I am so envious of my colleagues from 100 years ago who only sang new works, they hardly ever sang revivals.

You finally have to learn to pull all the different kinds of teaching and training and coaching together on you own, so that your voice and body and technique for a sound that is consistent and solid.

Among the important realizations I had in my own days in the practice room was that if any one route to any one phrase didn't work after days of trying, then the exact opposite route should at least be explored, as well as every alternative in between, as counterintuitive as that often seemed.

I enjoy the more floaty, exposed, elegant singing.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

I do everything in the third person. Performance is about being someone else.

For years, I had no time for exploratory travel.

It is our responsibility to learn how to speak to an audience that is less informed about music, to give it a reason to want to come and see us instead of going to the movies.

I cannot imagine a more satisfying calling than my own: beauty, humanity, and history every day, combined with the cathartic joy of singing.

I'm lucky - I can do two things at once.

I want to keep my voice young, with nothing heavy.