Renée Fleming takes up her pen

RENEE FLEMING celebrates her birthday on February 14: to mark the occasion we re-visit an interview she gave to mark the publication her first book

THE AMERICAN SOPRANO ON AN ARTISTIC DEPARTURE - HER FIRST BOOK

'Understanding how singing works does not make you able to sing', says Renée Fleming. What it might do, however, is make you much more appreciative of the exertion singers go through on our behalf. As the American soprano writes in her autobiography - published in the UK this month - by the final scene of Bellini's II Pirata 'one's larynx feels as if it's risen to eye level. It is uncomfortable, to say the least.' I'm sure it is.

But Fleming's book is not aimed at winning the sympathy vote. Rather, as its title The Inner Voice suggests, it aims to bring us a little closer to understanding what an opera singer - and her voice - actually does.

'I found most autobiographies, particularly by singers, to be unsatisfactory from my point of view. I wanted to learn about the nuts and bolts of their singing and careers, and what they thought about music. Instead I would find they were chronicles of travelling and engagements. But then [US publisher] Viking came to me and said "No, we actually don't want an autobiography, we want a process-oriented book". And I said that interests me!'

The result remains necessarily part autobiography as the 'process' of being a singer is about more than having a world-class voice  – it's also about your education, choices about roles and repertoire, the image you cultivate, the business decisions you take. Fleming's career path – from her education (the State University of New York in Potsdam, postgraduate training at the Juilliard, masterclasses in Frankfurt with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf) to a 15-page pen-portrait of life backstage at the Met – provides a framework around which she discusses the differing vocal demands of Strauss's Marschallin or Mozart's Countess, and unpacks technical concepts such as passaggio and 'covering'.

Fleming's singing education – in the wider sense – also included a two-and-a-half year spell as part of a jazz trio, performing to packed houses every week with occasional tours, an experience she looks back on with affection, It was only when the saxophonist Illinois Jacquet invited her to tour with him that she was forced to decide what sort of a musical career she actually wanted. Classical, of course, won, though she still believes that 'when I listen to jazz it definitely affects how I sing classical music – for better or for worse, it's part of who I am'. She returned to some of that repertoire on her latest, primarily US-aimed, disc which she describes as 'an eclectic bunch of music – jazz standards, pop and classical, which are all united through an atmospheric mood'.

It frustrates her that there's such a need to pigeonhole music into easily marketable categories. 'This whole division in music is a relatively recent development. Before the '50s all classical artists sang popular songs. Think of Caruso. There was really no division between all of these different musical labels. What's happening now is that the labels are again melting away.'

By their very nature autobiographies, particularly ones written mid-career (and Fleming shows no sign of losing her position as one of the leading guarantors of box office success) tend to draw a kind of line in the subject's life; wrapping up the disordered events of the past into a neat narrative before the author moves on to episodes new. Did it feel like this for Fleming?

'Few of us ever take the time to really sit back, in a concentrated way, and look at the journey we've been on. In a way it's something we don't even want to know. I certainly didn't. I procrastinated miserably for a while before I really got down to business on this book.'

Despite outside appearances, Fleming's journey has not been one smooth ascendant path. A moving chapter recalls the crippling stage fright brought on by a debilitating cocktail of pressures: taking on new roles at an 'insane pace', an unpleasant experience at La Scala of being booed throughout a performance, the weight of expectation that comes with fame, and her divorce.

'Interestingly, that chapter was not difficult to write. In fact that was one of the things I was really looking forward to sharing. I really wanted to talk about stage fright because it's something that is not completely understood. Many young singers have come up to me and said they felt they needed to quit, but in reading this chapter they felt renewed by the fact that if I could overcome it – and to a certain extent continue to; this is not something that goes away completely – then they hoped that they could too. It was an opportunity to share something which might help, particularly young performers.'

Wanting to be 'helpful to young singers in trying to put together a very complex puzzle' was in fact one of her main aims of the book -that 'one concept or one sentence might unlock a very difficult aspect of singing'.

'I only ever intended to map out my own personal journey. And if someone learns something from that, that's fabulous.' Martin Cullingford

(Photo: Decca)