Renee Fleming Quotes

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

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

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.

I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.

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.

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.

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

I want to get out of the major opera houses.

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.

There's no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I'm performing.

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.

So much can be gained from watching other singers, seeing what they do and what they don't do, seeing how they look when they breathe, how wide they open their mouths for a high note.

The more you put into it, the more you and the audience will get out of it.

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.

Perfection often creates such a flawless surface that there's no place for the audience to enter into a piece, while the idiosyncrasies of individual style are like windows into the singer's heart.

Every singer eventually gets around to a Christmas disc.

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

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

Music enabled me as a fragile young person to give voice to emotions I could barely name, and how it enables me to give my voice the unique and mysterious power to speak to others.

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 want to keep my voice young, with nothing heavy.

One of my timesaving habits is to save all of my magazines and junk mail for airplane trips. I walk on the plane with a very heavy bundle, but by the time the trip is over, it can all be thrown away.

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

My parents discussed singing every night over the dinner table; I had a tremendous music education.

I enjoy the more floaty, exposed, elegant singing.

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

Very few opera singers in history have been able to cross into popular music.

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.

I don't like to sing loud.

I haven't really been able to transfer into that extraordinarily other worldly creature, other than I hope on stage.

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

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

For years, I had no time for exploratory travel.

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.

While it's a fact that a voice begins with natural talent, any talent must be nurtured, cajoled, wrestled with pampered, challenged, and, at every turn, examined.

I have a certain image that's more classic, and I'm happy to stay out of the fray.

For my own singing, I used to be attracted by the baroque, the flashier the better, but now I prefer a simpler, purer style.

Singers can also get away with a lot based on youth, strength and enthusiasm, only to find ten years later that what was once just a niggling problem has brought their careers to an end.

I'm not exactly an angry young person.

My worry is that opera will become an historic art form as opposed to a living, breathing thing.

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.

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

I listen to archival and historic recordings. I love watching singers. I learned a lot from watching videos.

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.

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

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

A lot of bad behavior in singers is caused by nerves.

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.