Top 30 Renee Fleming Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

I was always a very good student.

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.

For a while it was hard for me to say no to work.

With classical singing you have to put out so much air – you project, you emit force.

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.

For years, I had no time for exploratory travel.

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

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

Some of my first teachers were incredibly tough. You could never sing more than three words without being stopped and having to do it over 20 times. I loved that – that sort of process of dissecting and trying to figure out and master this incredibly mysterious instrument.

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

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

I think singing is one of the most natural things that human beings do, but it’s difficult.

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

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

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.

A lot of performers don’t want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don’t sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.

Every singer eventually gets around to a Christmas disc.

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

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.

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.

My parents were both high-school music teachers.

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.

Contrary to the norm, as my technique improved my voice became higher.

I’m not exactly an angry young person.