The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer (25 page)

Whether or not carrying a certain amount of weight is necessary for singing is a controversial topic. Beverley believed that it was, as she thought that it was the fatty tissue in the soft palate that could literally make or break someone’s sound. Fat can also create a natural support, just like pregnancy. When I listen to the telecast of the
Otello
I performed weeks after I had Sage, when I was decidedly heavier than usual, my sound is richer and darker. Then again, it could have been raging hormones that momentarily caused the change in color and weight in my voice.

There was a point in my life when I became completely obsessed with Maria Callas and how she lost her voice. I asked everyone I knew what they thought had happened to her, and many of them suggested that her voice had gone into quick decline after she lost sixty pounds (as legend has it, with the use of tapeworms). I have to speculate that, because she dropped the weight so quickly, she had been unable to develop a new means of support. In the few existing videos of her performances from that time, she often has her forearms pressed against her solar plexus while she sings, as if she is trying to create support externally, rather than through the abdominal wall strength and technique that are really needed. Of course, she also looks gorgeous, and in her new willowy body she became the Audrey Hepburn of the opera world and the darling of Balenciaga.

To one extent or another all performers are packaged, and like it or not, image is part of that package. Obviously the voice has to be there as well, but there’s also stage presence, charisma, or what the German language calls
Ausstrahlung,
or “shining out.” Then there has to be a distinctive sound—not just a good voice, but a distinctive and unique one—and, most important, an ability to communicate meaning and emotion to the audience. When I sit through a series of auditions, it’s quite clear who has those qualities and who doesn’t. Very few people, no matter how talented, really stand out. For a long time I didn’t have every element of my presentation and my own image together, which was one of the reasons things moved so slowly for me. Matthew Epstein and I began working together shortly after the birth of Sage, when I hadn’t managed to control my weight nearly as well as I had in my first pregnancy. (My line was “I thought she would weigh thirty-five pounds. You can imagine my surprise.”) He sat me down one day and spelled it out for me: “I know you want this very badly. If you want it enough, for Manon, for Violetta, for Arabella, you’ll lose the weight.”

Of course, I knew I was overweight, but it was jarring to hear it in plain speech from a professional I admired. When Susan Graham explained the low-carb theory to me, things finally started to turn around. I discovered over time that I am most comfortable with a consistent low-carbohydrate, low-fat diet, focused on green vegetables, berries, and soy-based substitutes for other main pyramid foods. Recently, I added to that regimen the wonders of Pilates, with a terrific coach in New York. Margaret Velez has given me the functional strength for which this program is famous, enabling me to feel not only stronger but more flexible onstage, as well as on the blue hills of my favorite ski slopes. The best part of it is the intense focus on core strength, which we need almost as much as dancers do. Now that I’m a convert, I only wish I had started years ago.

Matthew wasn’t the only person to offer an opinion on the subject of my image. When I signed on with Mary Lou Falcone as my publicist in 1995, she had her own suggestions: “I would like you to streamline the way you dress. Prints and cut velvet are not becoming to you, and you might like to consider giving away the coat you have on.”

Oh, to see yourself as others see you! She was right, of course, and I was reminded of some of my earlier experiences with the matter of my image, such as when my budding “diva” persona was humbled during my two summers at Glyndebourne. My sense of humor has always been self-deprecating, but this was really too much. In the festival atmosphere, a young singer has the added benefit of attending other performances, absorbing repertoire, and learning by observation. On one such afternoon, during the long intermission, I stepped out of the ladies’ room and noticed that the rather grand woman in front of me was trailing a long strand of toilet paper from her delicate shoes.
Tsk tsk,
I smugly thought. As I wandered alone around the grounds, practicing my studied expression of serious artistry, a gentleman tapped me on the shoulder and said politely, “Miss, your skirt is tucked into your pantyhose in the back.” He meant the
waist
of my pantyhose, of course. Some weeks later at another intermission, while I was trying to speak intelligently to patrons, a large bird deposited its contribution to the conversation on my forehead. I tried to think it was an anointment of sorts, hailing the arrival of the next great soprano. I finally gave up on ever having the sort of gracious image I craved when I arrived late for a performance of
The Rake’s Progress
. The usher kindly allowed me to enter the box after the performance had begun. It was very dark, and I took great care to enter silently at all costs, not disturbing in the least the quiet recitative that was taking place. I quickly aligned myself with the heads in front of me and those to my left and began to take my seat. Unfortunately, there was no chair in my place. After the loud crash, Murphy’s Law of humiliation dictated that several audience members in the rows ahead recognized me, all of whom asked with concern, “Miss Fleming, are you all right?”

It was then and there, once and for all, that I gave up the notion of developing a “persona.” I stopped practicing the sort of English that would place me geographically somewhere on the moon, using that high, sing-song voice attributed to only the best sopranos, and I decided that humility and humor must surely be the only real strategies for surviving such a rarefied existence.

With Mary Lou and Matthew, my instinct for recognizing good advice served me once again, and I listened, for part of being a great student is never allowing one’s ego to take precedence over the experience of other professionals. When my
Strauss Heroines
CD came out, one of the photos featured me glamorously dressed and lying across a bed. Soon after its release a journalist in the UK asked me during an interview, “Okay, how do you feel about using sex to sell your recording?” And the first thing out of my mouth was “Really? Do you think I did that? Thank you!” I was stunned, but I was also thrilled, never having been perceived as anything approaching sexy.

Andrew Eccles is the photographer with whom I have the greatest rapport. He has an eye for the most flattering angles and lighting and has photographed most of my CD portraits, requiring an entire day for a shoot that will supply the cover and publicity photos for between one and two years. I have also learned through experience how important it is to give to the camera, for an unfocused, tired, or dull expression does not an interesting photograph make. Hours of this takes a great deal of discipline and concentration, but if an alluring photograph encourages someone to pick up a CD of Strauss scenes and listen to it, then so be it. We live in an entirely visual society now, and the consumer is known to buy music with his eyes. If the expectations for women today, in particular, are often depressing and unrealistic, at the same time refusing to acknowledge that I am subject to those standards isn’t going to make them go away, no matter how much I may resent them.

I have always been drawn to beauty, in whatever form it takes. Through my dear friend and Czech coach Yveta Synek Graff, I met one of Gianfranco Ferré’s assistants at a postperformance party during a San Francisco production of
Rusalka,
and I told her of my interest in couture and how much I admired Ferré’s work. I have always loved fashion, and never more than when I compiled my vintage collection at a Potsdam thrift shop for fifty cents per paper bag. I was especially taken with men’s jackets and rhinestones and with fabulous cocktail dresses from the forties. My fashion sense was not unlike my singing back then: I had a lot of natural talent, but I just didn’t have my style worked out.

Unbeknownst to me, this wonderful woman, Susan Mele, spent the next two years pleading my case, and in 1998, Ferré himself agreed to design a gown for me. It was burgundy, with a long train and a very simple silhouette, half velvet (though not cut velvet) and half wool crepe, and wearing it made me feel as if I were having a glass of superb Champagne after a lifetime of sweet pink wine. That marked the beginning of our relationship, and since then Mr. Ferré has generously designed one or two gowns a year for me. This is an aspect of my concert career that would otherwise have involved a great deal of effort in fittings, in decisions, and in cost. Instead, Mr. Ferré or an assistant and I meet before the upcoming season and decide on designs, and sometime after that a beautiful gown is delivered by post from Milan to my door without any fittings being necessary. Fashion’s stork . . . Because my new concert-heavy schedule requires more gowns than any one designer could provide, I have more recently and fortuitously worn concert gowns designed by Issey Miyake and Oscar de la Renta, as well. When people tell me my life is glamorous, my first thought is usually of all the time spent in airports and rehearsals, but couture is one element of divadom that I gratefully embrace. In exchange, the designers receive valuable exposure, and exposure that speaks directly to their clientele, who are often concertgoers. My relationship with Rolex is based on the same premise. The company’s aim is to align itself with excellence in the arts, sports, and science and exploration. In exchange, I receive invaluable amounts of print publicity.

A real diva also has a colorist who travels to Paris, London, Houston, and Chicago to keep up appearances. Michael Stinchcomb of Vartali Salon has been equally important in developing my image. It seems that, after all, hair requires more effort than clothing.

 

In all of these relationships, the greatest benefit is in feeling wonderful onstage, which enables me to focus completely on the performance at hand. It has always fascinated me to learn about the different needs that artists have when it comes to performing. Some singers require an incredible amount of time to focus their concentration before they go on, coming to the theater hours before the beginning of the overture, while others can sit backstage playing cards, set aside their hands, walk onstage, sing a bloodcurdling high C, murder the heroine, and then go back to their hands. Some brilliant singers have admitted that they’re putting together their grocery lists during their most difficult scenes. Valery Gergiev asks his chauffeur to leave him off blocks away from the Maryinsky Theatre to clear his mind before the performance, much to the worry of his administration, since he also prefers to arrive seconds before the downbeat. Joan Sutherland worked at her needlepoint right until the moment she walked onstage, and I don’t think it was because she imagined Lucia di Lammermoor enjoyed the craft. Everyone has her own way of preparing for the rigors of a performance. Ideally, I will read through the entire role silently the day I appear in an opera, to review and find new insights. Whenever possible, I prefer a quiet dressing room, with as few distractions and interruptions as possible, and at least an hour and a half to prepare my voice and my appearance. I try to “force liquids,” forgoing my favorite, coffee, and eat a moderate meal ninety minutes before the show. The time between leaving home and finishing the performance can often last as long as six hours.

While born with a vivid imagination that enables me to put myself in a particular character’s situation, I had to work to learn how to realize that identification physically. When I sang Carlisle Floyd’s
Susannah
at the Met, I was still struggling with the last vestiges of stage fright and the end of my divorce proceedings, and the tears were streaming down my face during the first act. Under the circumstances, my emotions were easier to access than they’ve ever been. Charles Nelson Reilly had been the first person I called when the heart of the crisis began a year earlier, and he reassured me, “The stage is where everyone lives out his sorrow, but it’s safe. It’s a refuge for those who suffer in their real lives.” He loves to quote Emily Dickinson: “My business is to sing.” “Make this your mantra,” he said. That night I was making singing my business, giving it my heart and soul, yet a trusted friend said to me afterward, “You know, you really have to work on your acting.” She didn’t realize I was 100 percent involved with and connected to the heartbreak and isolation Susannah was feeling. That’s when it clicked for me: It wasn’t enough for me to feel a character’s emotions; I had to be able to express them in such a way that the audience could feel them, too, especially in a big house, where no one can see my face past the tenth row without a pair of binoculars. Emotion has to be conveyed through every facet of body language, gestures, and movement. This was an important breakthrough for me, an aspect of performing that I am continuing to explore in every performance. Being innately inhibited, not to mention awkward, I have devoted a great deal of attention to this subject in recent years, once I began to get my voice under control.

I remember, years before, seeing a performance of the play
Wuthering Heights
as a student, and going backstage afterward to meet the actor playing the brooding, smoldering Heathcliff. I asked him how he could possibly give such a high-intensity performance night after night, and he said, “It’s my job to make you feel that way, but if I actually became that person every night, I couldn’t survive it.” Jan DeGaetani used to say that she did her crying in the practice room and the studio. She would get the emotion out of her system in the rehearsal so that the audience could then experience it during the performance: “They cannot experience the same emotion in the work which you experienced if you are indulging yourself and can no longer perform.” Jan’s other great piece of advice was to stop striving to be perfect. “Give yourself about a ten percent leeway,” she used to say. “Having perfection as your goal will only set you up for failure. Once you realize an error, and then begin to contemplate the fact that because the performance is no longer perfect, it’s been ruined, the next thing you know it really
is
ruined, because your concentration is gone. You are no longer actively performing.” She believed it was much better to calculate in a margin for error because, after all, we’re only human. I’ve never experienced what I would consider to be a perfect performance. There are far too many variables: vocal, interpretative, dramatic, physical. Opera is simply far too complex an art form.