Renee Fleming

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Cosaway this week is a singer. She's seen and heard most often in opera, but her versatility and range mean that she's also in demand for many other roles as well. Hers is the haunting voice of Elvish in Lord of the Rings, and earlier this year she released a C D of jazz and rock classics.

Presenter0:46

The daughter of music teachers in upstate New York, she went to the Juilliard School of Music, and then studied in Germany, where she went to master classes given by Elizabeth Schwartzkop.

Presenter0:55

Despite her obvious talent she found the business of singing extremely hard, and sometimes despaired of ever making a success of it.

Presenter1:02

Then she was asked to step in at short notice to sing the part of the Countess in the Marriage of Figaro at Houston Grand Opera. That, she now thinks, launched her career a career that sees her to day at the top of her profession, a familiar presence in the world's great opera houses and the current incarnation of the great American soprano, capitals G, A, and S. Self criticism is where I live, she says. I can't imagine that I would ever be complacent. She is Renee Fleming. So it was quite a long time coming for you, Renee. I mean, you were twenty nine when you suddenly got that big break. You went really from nothing to being th the lead role, the Countess, one of the most difficult and demanding roles in the repertoire.

Renee Fleming1:43

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.

Speaker 42:01

This

Presenter2:05

And it

Renee Fleming2:07

Uh

Presenter2:07

Exactly. But did you know in that moment it was going to make or break you? Is that what you felt?

Renee Fleming2:11

No, I had w you know, we never have that kind of perspective when we're really just trying to survive a particular experience, uh, but that was the greatest one.

Presenter2:19

You mentioned though standing in at the last minute for other people. Didn't you stand in as Des Demona to Placido Domingo Zotello at one point and just hadn't even met him before? He walked straight on the stage.

Renee Fleming2:28

Yes, yeah. 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.

Presenter2:57

But you've often stressed in in describing this path to fame, you know, that you were not a natural performer, you didn't have a natural gift on stage, that it was never obvious that you were going to be a singer or achieve what you achieve. That is very, very difficult to believe.

Renee Fleming3:11

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 performer.

Presenter3:34

So you didn't have this ambition. You didn't say, you know, when I grow up, I want to be a son.

Renee Fleming3:38

Oh God, no, anything but. I I I didn't enjoy performing at all. I loved music though. And eventually it my love for music really won out and I taught myself how to perform.

Presenter3:50

Let's let's have your first record. What would you like to take to a desert island with you, Renee?

Renee Fleming3:55

Well, the voice of Leontine 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 C.

Speaker 45:10

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Presenter5:25

Leontine Price singing Tacea la Notte Placida, the Peaceful Night Lay Silent, from the first act of Verdi's Il Trovatore, with the new Philharmonia orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta. And there was that high C, huh? That's exactly right. But you can now do that, I am quite sure.

Renee Fleming5:36

Yeah, that's exactly what I

Renee Fleming5:39

No, no, no, not like her, in my dreams, but I d I have a high sea of sorts.

Presenter5:41

For in my dream

Presenter5:44

But she was someone, you say, who sang recital and concert repertoire as well. And that's something you're doing.

Renee Fleming5:48

Yeah.

Presenter5:49

Much more these days. You sort of stopped touring the great opera houses of the world. This is a kind of lifestyle choice, is it?

Renee Fleming5:50

Yeah.

Renee Fleming5:56

Yes, it i well, it's it's it's actually uh 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 thirty cities. So it enables me to travel the world a little bit more. But it also enables you to be at home more, perversely, 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.

Presenter6:14

And so it

Presenter6:16

Big

Presenter6:28

Coloured the

Renee Fleming6:28

They're ten and thirteen.

Presenter6:30

Mm. And you live together in New York? Yeah.

Renee Fleming6:31

And so

Presenter6:32

And so,

Renee Fleming6:33

Yeah, so I sing opera at the Met now probably two a year. But you take them to school in the mornings, that's the point. Well, I take them to the bus. And you walk the dog. Walk the dog. Do all of those normal things. What do you really need? Is a sort of permanent job at the Met, really, isn't it? Well, that that's kind of, you know, my situation. And then in I try to be in Europe every summer as much as I can be and they're with me and they love it.

Presenter6:43

Is there a permanent job?

Presenter6:46

Yeah.

Presenter6:54

Yeah, yeah. But take me back to your childhood in uh Rochester, upstate New York. Your parents were music teachers, you say. But what what what kind of instrument or voice, what did they teach?

Renee Fleming6:58

Upstate New York.

Renee Fleming7:00

Drace

Renee Fleming7:04

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 font trap. So we performed in trios, quartets. Did you invite the neighbors round?

Presenter7:08

This was so

Presenter7:24

Basically.

Renee Fleming7:24

Oh, well known. Oh, the neighbors came around. I mean, we didn't even have to invite them. And, you know, if the door was open, it was the summer, they were there.

Presenter7:33

But they just turned up because they heard this noise. I see. But financially, you weren't that.

Renee Fleming7:34

Yeah, because they heard their noise.

Presenter7:39

Well healed, I understand. I mean music teaching doesn't bring in that much

Renee Fleming7:41

Yeah, maybe.

Renee Fleming7:42

No, and and also where my father first taught in Pennsylvania, um, you know, his salary was so small that it was it was supplemented our what we ate was supplemented with his hunting and fishing. So I you know, people think of venison of of as a delicacy, but for us it was the way we had protein.

Presenter8:01

To help make ends meet. Yeah.

Renee Fleming8:03

And you were

Presenter8:03

Strange. Yeah.

Renee Fleming8:03

Uh

Presenter8:03

Uh

Renee Fleming8:03

I mean you would

Presenter8:04

I mean you were you were a teacher's pet, huh?

Renee Fleming8:06

Yes, well Miss Perfect, yeah. Which I hated. I wanted I wanted to be bad. I wanted to wear nylons and smoke in the bathroom and

Presenter8:07

So, yeah.

Renee Fleming8:15

And fight and do I I I just thought that the renegades were the most glamorous and the f and free spirits and all of that. And I was very bound by

Renee Fleming8:24

you know, what a good girl should do and um

Presenter8:27

You needed approval, do you?

Renee Fleming8:28

Oh, desperately. And I'm a bit freer now, but I I'm still um I'm still a little bit limited by those those k kind of g constrictions. Echo number two.

Renee Fleming8:41

Joni Mitchell I discovered as an eighteen year old and I still remember uh the C D being handled to me. Well, it was of course it was an L P at that time, the hissing of summer lawns. And she has remained my touchstone ever since, my musical touchstone.

Renee Fleming8:57

because she explored so much music. And I chose my own recording actually of her song River, and I finally met her this year. I 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.

Renee Fleming9:13

Has he heard you

Presenter9:13

Sing this.

Renee Fleming9:14

Yeah.

Presenter9:14

Uh

Renee Fleming9:14

Do we have to do that? Well, 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.

Presenter9:14

Do we have to react?

Speaker 49:33

I wish I had a real one.

Speaker 49:37

I could skate away

Speaker 49:41

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 49:43

Yeah.

Speaker 49:44

I made a plan.

Presenter9:51

Yeah.

Speaker 49:51

Yeah.

Presenter9:51

Uh

Speaker 49:52

Yeah.

Presenter9:53

That's my castaway Renee Fleming singing Joni Mitchell's River. It I mean, you are unrecognisable. It's a completely different vocal technique, isn't it? We never heard you down there.

Renee Fleming10:03

Well, you know what I 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 um who are opera singers trying to sing pop songs. Um when I was a student I actually sang with the jazz trio for two and a half years every weekend in my college town. We were the 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. And 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.

Presenter10:43

So you've kind of come back to it, if you like, because it was a road not taken from that, wasn't it?

Renee Fleming10:46

Yes, that wasn't a good thing. 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

Renee Fleming11:01

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. Is there part of you that would quite like to give up the other than and go for jazz? 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 50 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 C's anymore, then I'll go back to Joe's Pup. Tell me about record number three.

Renee Fleming11:41

Sarah Vaughan was the first um 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

Renee Fleming11:54

Which I took as a huge compliment. She spoke to me. 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 Sarah Vaughan 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.

Renee Fleming12:14

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.

Speaker 412:30

I've got the world on a string Sitting on a rainbow Got the string around my finger

Renee Fleming12:36

Go!

Speaker 412:42

What a world, what a life, I'm in love.

Speaker 412:50

I got a song that I sing. I can make the rain go anytime.

Renee Fleming12:57

Sarah Born and I've got the world on a string. Well, and this song is the epitome of swing. If anybody ever says that swings, remember this piece because this is it.

Presenter13:07

Mm.

Renee Fleming13:07

Good start.

Presenter13:09

Tell me I want to hear a bit more about the pain of your singing career as it develops. You had a terrible time, didn't you, quite early on, auditioning for the Met National Council. It was a programme for young singers.

Renee Fleming13:19

Oh, yes. I had a a t it was it's it's actually kind of funny in retrospect, but um I thought I could prepare um Achi Fus, which is uh Pamina's aria 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 you know I got to uh it was so painful because I could see the faces of my friends and family in the audience,'cause this was in my hometown.

Renee Fleming13:52

And they all you know, you could see that they were just dying for me.

Renee Fleming13:55

And the piano, 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.

Presenter14:01

Seek.

Presenter14:03

But it was all about, as you said earlier, trying too hard to please, wasn't it? Doing all of these auditions, always choosing difficult pieces.

Renee Fleming14:10

Well, I 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.

Presenter14:32

So they never I mean, y they never saw you stand up and be who you were and let a piece, you know, a a a standard piece

Renee Fleming14:39

No. 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.

Presenter14:40

Yeah.

Renee Fleming14:55

And uh my voice wasn't worked out yet, so I needed that time to develop.

Presenter14:59

And you had some help along the way, as I mentioned in the introduction from Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. You went to Germany from the Juilliard School and she was giving masterclasses. What was that like? What did she think of you?

Renee Fleming15:09

Well, I was only twenty three. I mean, it was it was kind of a it was 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 uh interpretive information. So it was an interesting um experience as part of an incredibly important and crucial year.

Presenter15:22

Hmm.

Renee Fleming15:28

He was quiet. Ta. Fuck.

Presenter15:28

Yeah.

Renee Fleming15:29

Well, she's tough on everyone. I mean, you know.

Presenter15:31

I mean

Renee Fleming15:33

She's tough on everyone. What happened in that class was that I got a little bit confused. The problem with master classes is that somebody famous walks in.

Renee Fleming15:43

imparts all kinds of information. And for a young, a really young singer, this can create more kind of confusion because then this famous person leaps

Renee Fleming15:56

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.

Presenter16:06

But you're going to take her to your desert island nevertheless.

Renee Fleming16:09

Oh, I love her voice. She also changed she changed the face of how Strauss is sung. She, Maria Collis, are two artists who who not only came and were great, great singers, but they forever changed how we sing that repertoire that they sang and how we hear that repertoire.

Speaker 416:31

Here's the touration.

Speaker 416:53

Until

Presenter17:26

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing Im Arbentrot, the last of Richard Strauss's four last songs, with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by George Sell. You sing those too, of course, Renee Fleming. You've gone as far as to say they were made for you, they're closest to me, you said. Is that a a musical judgment or a personal one?

Renee Fleming17:44

Well, it's 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.

Presenter18:12

You talk about its physical effect on you. What about the ph the the physical business of of singing it? Because i it is a totally physical business, isn't it? You've talked about making your mouth square, almost a sort of oblong going back into your throat to open the throat up for the sound to come in.

Renee Fleming18:26

Yes, yes, for high 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 in a mirror is 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, in the head, in the mouth, and the chest.

Renee Fleming18:49

Then that's how the sound is created. It actually happens in the resonance. And the better.

Presenter18:53

But then you have to aim that sound, don't you, depending on what sound you want to through various whether it's through your nostrils or through your

Renee Fleming19:02

Exactly. You know, we talk about head voice and chest voice and mouth resonance, you know, and these are 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, you know. 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.

Presenter19:31

And it is the most difficult thing to sing very softly. I'm thinking of you singing, for example, the Countess's Aria in Figero Dove Sono, when you know you weeping as it were and you're just you want to sing so softly, so quietly. The control that's needed for that is much greater, is it not, than singing?

Renee Fleming19:48

Yeah, and for Mozart in general, Mozart requires a sort of per 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 being, of having to express something that's very intimate. Number five, what's that?

Renee Fleming20:09

George Crum wrote Apparition for Janda Gaitani, who was my voice teacher when I studied at the Aspen Music Festival. But I just find these pieces very haunting. It's 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

Renee Fleming20:32

Relaxing place, a place that one wants to sink into.

Speaker 420:55

And the holy screen wisfuring.

Speaker 421:03

Whose voice is that?

Speaker 421:19

Uh

Presenter21:23

Part of Apparition, written by George Crumb for Jan de Gaetany, accompanied by Gilbert Kalish. You're a champion, Renee Fleming, of American music. Andre Previn wrote an opera for you. Of course he wrote Streetcar Named Desire. And Blanche Dubois, of course you played.

Presenter21:38

A role inhabited originally in the play, Tennessee Williams played by Vivian Lee, but she didn't have half a dozen very demanding arias in that.

Renee Fleming21:44

Exactly. It was tough, wasn't it? Yeah, but oh, so wonderful.

Presenter21:45

It was tough.

Renee Fleming21:49

So I I have to say I've always loved new music. Um I fell in love with every every new piece that I really loved as a student was was a contemporary American piece.

Presenter21:59

But in a sense, new music takes greater work, greater effort on the part of the audience, doesn't it?

Renee Fleming22:06

For some audience members, it didn't for me. I mean, because I it 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 wanna 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.

Renee Fleming22:29

Tell me about

Presenter22:29

Um another desperate moment in your life, which is when at La Scala Milan you were booed.

Renee Fleming22:37

Yes. Well, we certainly in the circles that I've always sung in are not used to opera 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. It has been the norm for many, many years. I mean, Leila Genscher came to the performance, and afterwards she said to me, she said, Oh, that was nothing in my day. Oh, I see that. They could really boo.

Presenter23:00

They could read.

Renee Fleming23:04

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.

Presenter23:13

But in a sense, because of what you were talking about earlier, your own lack of confidence early on, it was you were the wrong person to have it happen to, weren't you? It it sort of had a quite a decent

Renee Fleming23:22

Yeah. See, and 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

Renee Fleming23:35

My husband and I were getting a divorce in the same period.

Speaker 323:38

Yeah.

Renee Fleming23:38

And it was shortly after that that I developed crippling stage fright, which took me almost a year to recover from.

Presenter23:45

But you just couldn't walk on.

Renee Fleming23:47

Yeah, 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. So, what happened? Well, I I 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?

Renee Fleming24:18

Has it gone now? Your gremlins are gone. Yes, yes. So I'm in a period of real.

Renee Fleming24:24

Real luxury and real growth right now.

Renee Fleming24:28

More music. This is the great soprano Gabriela Benachkova singing Rusalka's Song to the Moon from the Tvorshak Opera. The Song to the Moon is my own signature piece. It's the aria 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 this aria, I wasn't getting anywhere. I wasn't really having luck in auditions.

Renee Fleming24:58

I won competitions with it and won engagements with it, so I said, Aha, we're we're bound And um I first recorded the aria with Schulte, uh Serge Scholte, who was incredibly instrumental in um uh giving me all of my biggest breaks here in Europe.

Presenter25:15

He was quite a fan.

Renee Fleming25:16

Oh, God. He was, um he was so important and such a crucial part of my um of of of my biggest breaks.

Presenter26:21

Gabriela Benochkeva singing O Silver Moon from Dvojak's Ruzalka with the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Václav Neumann.

Presenter26:29

The other famous role that you came to late is that of Violetta, the courtesan in Verdi's La Traviata, The Fallen Woman. I think you were in your forties, weren't you, by the time you played her, performed her at the Met.

Renee Fleming26:35

Yeah.

Presenter26:41

Is she that demanding? Is she impossible to do before you really experience?

Renee Fleming26:47

Well, I've had sort of an unusual trajectory in that um as I've grown technically, my voice has gotten higher rather than lower. You know, it it 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.

Presenter27:14

But she is a she's a great role, isn't she? But very, very demanding because she's she runs the gamut really of every single

Renee Fleming27:16

Okay.

Renee Fleming27:21

Well, they always ask of us about it. They 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 years, so I can't wait.

Presenter27:28

But

Presenter27:38

But when you did her at the Met, as I say, a few years ago, if it hadn't been agreed before, it was certainly agreed then that you

Presenter27:46

had, have, achieved greatness. And sadly, it wasn't recorded, and it hasn't been recorded. It wasn't recorded in that moment. Far, far fewer recordings are made these days, so it's it's not captured for posterity. I wonder how much that depresses you.

Renee Fleming28:00

Opera repertoire is the most difficult thing right now to have recorded because it's so incredibly expensive and it's such a specialist item, so few people buy complete recordings.

Presenter28:09

Pean pop

Presenter28:11

So th th there's less market for it, so it's not happening, but that must be for an artist really.

Renee Fleming28:12

For example.

Presenter28:16

Well we could rather

Renee Fleming28:17

Well, we have to be creative. I mean, I'm singing um Traviata with uh Placeito Domingo's company in LA this coming fall, and it will be taped for television and therefore D V D. 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.

Presenter28:34

Yeah.

Presenter28:36

Number seven.

Renee Fleming28:38

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 Mahler-esque 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.

Presenter29:28

Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock and Joanna Steam. You tell me, um, Renee, that you're discussing the opera seasons twenty eleven and twenty twelve. That's terrible, isn't it? I it comes with the territory, but this what a straitjacket to live in, with a dialogue.

Renee Fleming29:40

Yeah, yeah.

Renee Fleming29:44

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 anyway and just be harried and overworked.

Presenter29:57

Just be

Presenter29:58

But there are other disciplines as well, aren't there? You have to nurse the voice, obviously. You have to keep everything up to speed. And and presumably you have to be quite careful about what you eat as well. You know, it it comes with the territory, doesn't it? That if you've got a big voice you can

Renee Fleming30:01

So you have

Presenter30:11

Expand.

Renee Fleming30:13

Well, I don't know. Not that you look as if you've expanded at all. I was just going to say thanks a lot.

Presenter30:14

Not that you look as if

Presenter30:15

Panda tool.

Renee Fleming30:19

No, but I'm not sure if you're unusual. You're unusual, aren't you? Well, you know, there's really no truth to that. What I would say is that.

Presenter30:20

Of course, you slim down. You're unusual, aren't you? Well, you know, it.

Renee Fleming30:29

People who have voices very often come in larger packages. So that's sort of the chicken and the egg argument for that.

Speaker 430:33

Yeah.

Presenter30:33

Hmm.

Presenter30:36

Okay, so why aren't you a larger person then? Well, I am. I'm tall.

Renee Fleming30:39

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'll look great on stage. Which I thought, oh, no. You know, but in fact, it's definitely a positive.

Presenter30:58

It's the Czech ancestry, isn't it? Yeah. And what about fame itself? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but is it the case that despite the fact you're at the top of your profession, the fact that it's such an elite profession

Renee Fleming30:59

Yeah.

Presenter31:10

Means that you can still walk down Bottom Street or Fifth Avenue and not be totally mobbed.

Renee Fleming31:15

Do you know, that is such a wonderful thing. I mean, I literally have to be standing in the middle of Lincoln Center in T in Tower Records to be to have people come up and say, I love your work.

Presenter31:25

So you can trail round Central Park in your tracksuit bottoms and

Renee Fleming31:28

Oh yeah.

Presenter31:29

You're fine.

Renee Fleming31:30

No problem.

Renee Fleming31:31

Last record.

Renee Fleming31:33

Maurizio Pollini 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.

Presenter32:45

Maurizio Pollini playing the second movement of Beethoven's piano sonata number thirteen in E flat major. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Rene. This is the the most difficult question of all, really, isn't it?

Renee Fleming32:57

I'll tell you, that's a hard question because I can't choose a singer. I there are too many singers I love. I mean a a a classical singer. Um so I would have to say it would be something from Joni Mitchell.

Renee Fleming33:09

So it would be Joni Mitchell's river, not mine.

Renee Fleming33:12

That would be the thing.

Presenter33:13

What about a book? We give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare.

Renee Fleming33:18

Well, that's a real help. Thank you. I would choose C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and 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.

Renee Fleming33:37

And said, I think you'll enjoy this. I remember that very moment. The book really.

Renee Fleming33:44

captured my imagination and made me a fanatical reader.

Renee Fleming33:49

Forever on.

Renee Fleming33:51

And we give you a luxury. What would you like? I always say coffee is my absolute luxury. I sh 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.

Renee Fleming34:06

But I love it.

Renee Fleming34:08

Yeah.

Presenter34:08

Yeah.

Renee Fleming34:08

Related.

Presenter34:08

Dave Fleming, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you. It's been a joy.

Speaker 334:21

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.