The Inner Voice: Notes From A Life On Stage

Rating:
Summary: should be required reading for all musicians
Review: Before reading Renee Fleming's book "The Inner Voice," my admiration for her stemmed solely from her glorious voice--what tone, what shading, what warmth--truly a god-inspired instrument. I have always appreciated her interpretations of Strauss, Mozart, and Handel, so it was with great eagerness that I picked up her new book. I couldn't it put it down. Page after page revealed candid and luminous insights into everything from vocal technique to the recording industry to inspiring teachers to her mentors and fellow musicians that continue to inspire her. The prose is lucid, and her honesty and candor are astonishing, describing her trials to become a world-class musician, and how aspiring musicians might follow a similar path. She even touches on the difficult moments in her life, in which she contemplated quitting her operatic career, and how she overcame such obstacles. For anyone who knows how difficult the musical life can be, constantly running to catch the next plane and the lonely isolation that is sure to ensue, Renee Fleming's words are inspiring. Yet, Fleming refuses to indulge in sentimentality, instead moving from personal insights to the excitement of performing at the MET to her concert career and work with the greatest conductors, pianists, and orchestras. Any lover of music can appreciate her insights into the music world and its fascinating people. Having finished her book, I now not only appreciate Fleming's talent and extraordinary vocal abilities, but also her unique and wonderful personality. What a treasure of the music world!

Rating:
Summary: No Prima Donna Ranting Here...the Story of Her Voice
Review: I knew it had to be more than coincidence that the opera singer Roxane Coss in Ann Patchett's accomplished novel, "Bel Canto", reminded me of Renée Fleming. As it turns out, Patchett assisted the world-renowned soprano in the writing of her polite yet down-to-earth memoir here. Despite how colorfully punctilious the opera world can be, there is nary a tidbit of gossip to be found in this book, and having performed in the world's leading opera houses, she has probably seen it all and could tell some ribald stories. But she takes a more tactful route and as a result, she comes across as almost academic yet powerfully ambitious. The seemingly contradictory combination actually helps make some of her vaunted statements more reflective than self-serving (for example, "I believe the ultimate goal of an opera singer is to create a legacy"). In fact, Fleming seems intent on providing a primer for rising young singers to learn her lessons with chapter titles such as "Business" and "Image". And she has reason to be heard, as she is probably the only female classical music star today who is comparable to Callas, Sutherland and Sills in stature.

Truth be told, Fleming is not as innately likeable as Sills, but I don't think she aspires to be either. She is truly the product of hard work and discipline, values that permeate her career as much as her vast talent. At least, the soprano is honest about her fragile and recalcitrant voice being the product of care and technique rather than positioning it as some inspirational gift to share with the masses. In that vein, I also like her sharp accounts of brutally honest publicists and managers who have criticized her clothes, her acting and her weight. Fleming is also candid about the challenges she faces in juggling stardom with being the single mother of two. I would think this book would be valuable to any aspiring singer, classical or otherwise, as she goes into great detail about her vocal technique and study habits. For the rest of us, we can be impressed by this accomplished performer from a distance, for Fleming is quite circumspect when it comes to her personal life beyond talking about her children. I don't consider that a failing of this book, but it does make me think what an alternatively interesting book could have been written had Patchett written it strictly in the third person as an observer. I am planning to see Fleming's Met performance of Handel's "Rodelinda" next month co-starring with the amazing countertenor David Daniels, and now that I've read her story, I can fully appreciate how she got there.

Rating:
Summary: Very candid portrayal from a great singer
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book. It is a very candid portrayal of a very successful and busy singer and a mother above all. I do not have any formal music education. Therefore, sometimes it was hard to understand some of the concepts Ms. Fleming was writing about. Despite that I learnt a great deal about operatic singing. For instance, I now know the difference between chest voice and head voice. It is wonderful to understand how opera singers pour out those beautiful notes. Ms. Fleming takes us into her deeper world and tells us candidly about her upbringing, on stage and backstage experiences. I definitely have much more respect for opera singers after reading this book. Also, don't forget to listen to an album of Ms. Fleming while reading this book. It feels as if she is talking to you.

Rating:
Summary: Young Singer's!!!--You MUST Read!!!
Review: Ms. Fleming provides concise, and wise answers to many of the questions that are usually answered ambiguously. I don't believe anyone on her level (where most of us would like to be) has spoken so candidly about their career. With chapters like "Business", "Apprenticeship", and "Education" there is a wealth of direct information that will inspire you to face the reality of your dreams. All young singer's (not just sopranos) must read.

Rating:
Summary: Fresh and interesting
Review: Renee Fleming evidently started out determined to write a different sort of opera singer's memoir. She calls her book "the autobiography of my voice" and tries gamely to keep matters of breath control, vocal placement, posture and resonance at center stage. She succeeds about half the time, and that makes her slim volume well worth reading. Inevitably, there is a certain amount of backstage chitchat and career-mongering in the mix, but Fleming deserves credit for at least trying to write a book that rises above all that.

Fleming is the daughter of two school music teachers from upstate New York (her mother sang with the Rochester Opera) who discovered her voice as an adolescent and seems to be still surprised by the success it has brought her as opera star, recitalist and soloist with orchestras. Even today, having reached the very top of the operatic tree, she writes of feeling insecure and having anxiety attacks that can come close to making her cancel engagements.

She gives major credit for developing her talent to two teachers, both of them virtual unknowns to the general public --- Pat Misslin at the State University of New York at Potsdam and the late Beverley Johnson in New York City. Teaching singing is a notoriously inexact business and a profession harboring a disturbing number of charlatans; the young singer who finds the right teachers is fortunate indeed, and Fleming expresses her gratitude to these mentors freely.

Her book goes into deep anatomical detail about vocal production. The problem, of course, is that this subject is almost impossible to pin down in sensible English, so we end up with passages like this: "my job is to keep the back of my neck open, relaxed and free. I will find more space in the back of my mouth for my high notes while easing up on my breath pressure..."

It is not easy for the lay reader, or even the young student singer, to decode language like that.

Alongside these passages that read a bit like a manual on vocal production, there is the career narrative. But even here Fleming tries to draw lessons and bits of sound advice from what she has experienced, not simply to narrate breathlessly what cities she jetted between, what colleagues were nasty or nice, and what catty remarks were made by so-and-so.

The writing is fresh and vigorous. No writer-collaborator is credited on the jacket or title page, though the novelist Ann Patchett is acknowledged for "silent work on paper," whatever that may mean. The literary voice that comes through is that of a self-aware and generous-hearted person who also knows that she has been given a great vocal gift and wants to share what luck and labor have taught her.

Fleming also delivers the predictable helpings of advice on repertory choice, on publicity and promotion, on preserving the voice for a longer career, and on other practical matters. There are some interesting comments on the current malaise of the classical record business and an interesting account of a typical "Traviata" evening at the Met, from her first arrival at the theater to signing autographs for "canary fanciers" at the stage door well after midnight. There are no pictures except a frontispiece, which shows Fleming's seriousness of purpose, and no index, which is a serious lapse on her publisher's part.

THE INNER VOICE is short on gossip and vainglorious puffery, but it has plenty of compensating virtues.

--- Reviewed by Robert Finn ([e-mail])

Rating:
Summary: The Approachable Diva
Review: This book is so high class I hardly know where to begin to recount its virtues. First, it is not a celebrity autobiography and it does not give the inside opera gossip. Thankfully, it is free of the nastiness that so many opera tell-alls seem to revel in. This is the opposite, a gracious recounting of the creation of a diva's career. Renee Fleming is the voice of experience. Her discussion of vocal technique may be estoteric to general readers, but well the voice student knows how basic is breath support, and that the key to an aria's suitability is not the individual high notes, but the tessitura as a whole. Renee Fleming is the best possible guide to making a lasting career, and she discusses her own mistakes candidly, such as choosing too difficult and unknown material for auditions. No overnight success, she struggled for mastery. She sounds like a balanced person with good basic values. Every disappointment she suffered she managed to turn to her advantage. For example, when she had to attend a state college rather than Oberlin for financial reasons, she found an excellent voice teacher there who helped in grounding her basic technique. Renee Fleming tells us the high points of a diva's impossibly glamorous life, but she also tells us how painful and lonely it is to tour without family and friends. Years ago, I observed an attractive, friendly woman who was attending a Cecelia Bartoli appearance at Tower Records - she was greeted warmly by her friends and called "Renee". I realized that this must be Renee Fleming. This book is the woman I saw -- pleasant, open, realistic, and nice. And much more - knowledgeable about the needs of a career in opera, and generous in conveying her knowledge to others. Ann Patchett, the novelist, is certainly behind the sure, artistic and professional prose style. A lovely book of lasting value.