The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer (Hardcover)

by Renee Fleming (Author) "I AM NO STRANGER to having my luggage searched..." (more)
Key Phrases: breath pressure, New York, The Inner Voice, Mary Lou (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
From Publishers Weekly Calling this candid account "the autobiography of my voice," soprano Fleming details the years of study it took to master the art of vocal production and the discipline that brought her international renown. A former manager deemed her "the single most ambitious singer he has ever known," and given the tenacity with which she faced early setbacks—"I have a noble history of being rejected from a lot of places," she writes—his comment is understandable. After her first big break in 1990 (as the Countess in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro with the Houston Grand Opera), Fleming's rise to the top was steady. But she's quick to point out that the life of an opera star is not always glitter and glamour; the business side of singing—scheduling performances, arranging interviews and recordings, choosing a repertoire and marketing herself—is arduous. Although Fleming offers glimpses into her personal life, touching on her failed marriage and her loving relationship with her two daughters and concluding with a chapter describing what she experiences backstage during a Metropolitan Opera production, this is not a deeply intimate autobiography full of childhood vignettes, personal anecdotes and behind-the-curtains gossip. Instead, it's a realistic portrait of what it takes to succeed and a volume intriguing for its advice and honesty. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Interview with Renee Fleming
Renee Fleming speaks about recent projects, including The Inner Voice and her recent Handel CD, in our interview.

From Publishers Weekly
Calling this candid account "the autobiography of my voice," soprano Fleming details the years of study it took to master the art of vocal production and the discipline that brought her international renown. A former manager deemed her "the single most ambitious singer he has ever known," and given the tenacity with which she faced early setbacks—"I have a noble history of being rejected from a lot of places," she writes—his comment is understandable. After her first big break in 1990 (as the Countess in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro with the Houston Grand Opera), Fleming's rise to the top was steady. But she's quick to point out that the life of an opera star is not always glitter and glamour; the business side of singing—scheduling performances, arranging interviews and recordings, choosing a repertoire and marketing herself—is arduous. Although Fleming offers glimpses into her personal life, touching on her failed marriage and her loving relationship with her two daughters and concluding with a chapter describing what she experiences backstage during a Metropolitan Opera production, this is not a deeply intimate autobiography full of childhood vignettes, personal anecdotes and behind-the-curtains gossip. Instead, it's a realistic portrait of what it takes to succeed and a volume intriguing for its advice and honesty.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition. 1 in number line edition (November 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670033510
• ISBN-13: 978-0670033515
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #418,521 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Approachable Diva, December 16, 2004

By	Eileen Pollock (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

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.

53 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fresh and interesting, December 3, 2004

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

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])

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No Prima Donna Ranting Here...the Story of Her Voice, November 19, 2004

By	Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.