Every other week this fall, we will be airing some of Alec’s favorite episodes from our archives. This week, we feature two supernovas of the musical world: acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming and the reigning virtuoso of the violin, Itzhak Perlman. Opera singer Renée Fleming, whose voice has been described as "double cream," remembers her beginnings in music, overcoming stage fright and her professional debut in this 2012 conversation. Fleming talks about the rigors of preparation for performing and the challenges of being heard, without amplification, over an orchestra. In this conversation from 2019, legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman speaks with Alec in front of a live audience at the NYU Skirball Center, discussing his difficult childhood, being stricken by polio in the war-torn early days of Israeli statehood -- and coming to the United States at 13 to play on the Ed Sullivan Show. Perlman also performs live with wife Toby Perlman and eight former students from the Perlman Music Program, a summer school on Shelter Island that provide a safe space for young musical geniuses to develop their talents, and themselves.
This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. Every other week this fall, we will be airing a rebroadcast of some of my favorite episodes from our archives. This week we're featuring two super novas from the world of classical music, acclaimed soprano Renee Fleming and the reigning virtuoso of the violin, Itzac Proman. First my interview with Itzac Proman from two thousand nineteen. This is it sac Perlman's exquisite vibrato on Bach's first violin Sonata. He was mature by the time he made this recording, thirty years into a career year that started before his bar Mitzvah. Perlman doesn't like the word prodigy, but it's hard to avoid. At three, he was practicing scales on a toy violin. At four, he was studying with a great master. At thirteen, he was whisked away from his native Israel to the United States to be on the Ed Sullivan Show. He won admission to Juilliard that same year. From prodigy to master and finally national treasure. For sixty years, his life was a blur of world tours, and TV specials, playing for the Queen, and given a place of honor on the program for Obama's inauguration. Yet it's not Perlman had a difficult childhood, stricken by polio in the war torn early days of israel statehood. Now he gives back at every opportunity, including through the proman music program founded by his wife Toby. The summer school is located on idyllic Shelter Island, giving talented kids of every background the chance to study with the world's greatest musicians. You'll meet Toby and a couple of former students at the end of the program. You'll even hear the students play a virtuoso movement from Mendelssohn's Actete. The whole crew joined me live on stage at the n y U Screwball Center in Greenwich Village. I always ask people who have a career similar to your career, if you understood they have career similar to Mike. Well, not really, I actually know there aren't many. There aren't many, but anybody but anybody who was a young person who especially in this world during where they cultivate them very young, and in sports too, where they get these kids when they're ten years old, and they kind of know that they're heading to the NBA or the NFL or whatever. But you're a very young child, and I'm wondering, do you know what you're going through when you're a young child, or you're too busy doing it to understand what you're inside of when you were getting shot through? This rocket did become the famous well when I would look when I was young, Uh, my parents thought that I had a good ear because I could repeat everything, you know, by singing it. And then I said I want to play the violin, and I think they told me that I had a nice sound. So that was the, if you want to call it, the unusual thing about the way I played. I had a nice sound. You were playing on what didn't you like? A toy violin? Or But I just started with a toy, which I didn't like, so I quit that, and then I was playing on something. I don't remember what it was. It wasn't anything spectacular. I started really when I was like almost five four four and three quarters almost. You know, why what made you do I want it? I wanted I like the sound. I love the sound of the violin. I heard it on the radio, and I said, that's what I want to do. Simple, that's what I want to do. And and there's no explanation. You know, everybody has a different thing that they hear and it sort of grabs their imagination. And violence sound was that and I think it was hyper So it was pretty good for grabbing the imagination. You know, at what age do you've started a little tougher with them with their how old? Well, look, everybody has their own sort of schedule of development. You know. Sometimes you hear somebody at the age of twelve who just sound basic, not very very good, but you hear something there, and so you have to know what's to say and what not to say. I'd like to just insert that. You know, what's the great secret of a good teacher is not only knowing what to say, but knowing what not to say, and especially what not to say. When somebody that has great gift and great musical musical natural nous and those that have that great gifts in that naturally leave them alone. Do you leave them alone? No? No, you don't want to hurt them. No, it's not their feelings, it's you don't want to fox around. You know, you don't want to, you know, just let the natural ability to natural talent develop and usually things get better as you grow older, you know, without having to really nitpick with everything. And that's that's I find is a danger, because you know, when the teacher has such incredible talent in front of them, you know, they want to give you their old so then they become too picky. Leave it alone, Just leave it alone. During what years did you study with gold Guard? I studied with her from the age of five until I was thirteen. You studied with for eight years, eight years, and then you came to the United States to do Sullivan when you were thirteen years old. Then when you came to do so I find that believing. When you came to do Sullivan and you're thirteen years old, did you have any idea who Sullivan was? That's what your first idea. It's a weird exactly. No. No, I didn't know how how you looked or anything. I just I just in Israel they talked about because when we came to Israel to audition a whole bunch of people to go on his show. They said there they didn't call him Sullivan. They called him Sullivan that's Sullivan. Sat Sullivan. Uh, that's Sullivan, that's Sullivan. Oh, television, I said, okay, television. At the minute I heard television said I mean so I so I auditioned, you know, and then I was chosen. You know that there was there was sent people over to audition musicians. Yes, Israel, Yes, because he wanted at Sullivan wanted a show only of the isra Eli pard of my accent, only of the isra Eli people. So it was a variety great Jew and coming back to the homeland and the kids. Ever, well, there's some people thought his name was at Solomon, but we changed to at Sullivan. It might have but but you know, so the whole show was an Israeli variety show. You've seen this show. You know he had everybody had a monkey dancing, and then he had somebody playing the violin. And so in this particular case, it was a pair of folk singers that there was to know that we didn't have topo and we didn't have them, but we had a ballet dancer was fourteen. We had a coloratura soprano from Yemen. I think I was in the Department of Human Interest. Story or chubby story I don't know what I was what I was, but I was cute, I think, sorry, very cute. I was cute. Thank you so much, Thank you so cute. I know when you come over you've never been to the US before, your mother comes with you. Yes, and you perform on Sullivan. Yes, you remember what that was like to win the show. It was slightly exciting. Uh, I didn't know, No, it was it was very exciting, you know, and so I I kind of played and it was very It was over very quickly, you know, because I did the last moment of the Medicine Concerto and they cut it down to about I think two two minutes and forty five seconds because that was it. And uh, and he introduced me. He was a lovely gentleman, really very very nice. Is that what happened after you did Sullivan? Uh? We went on a tour in the US, The entire group that did Sullivan. We went on a on a tour long months. Yeah, about three or three or four months. Yeah. Yeah. And at the end of the and at the end of the tour, I went well, the main thing the challenge was to get into the Juilliard School, and that was one of it it was it was it was that a plan for you to go to Juilliard. Yes, when you were back in Israel, before Sullivan, before before Slight, it was a dream to go to Juilliard, but Sullivan made it. Yes, it was a very Juilliard. And there was a teacher there who taught Julia that I heard about in Israel, by name of Galamian. And so we said, one of these days, maybe you'll study with glam and Ivan Glaman. Yet his assistant at that time was Dorothy Delay, and she came and heard me play, and she thought that I had a good chance, had a good sound. I had a good sound. You know that that was my forte is the sound. But then you were about fourteen thirting half fourteen run around the same sound. So what was it like for you? You never lived in New York. And again this idea of being like shot out of a cannon to have the spectacular career, this big ticket career. You want thirteen years old, you want Sullivan, You're touring the country, You're gonna go to Juilliard. What was your recollection that was it intimidating or you don't have time to think about that? I didn't really think about it because it wasn't really look it wasn't like a professional career. It was a specialized career, you know, in other ways to play for It was an Ed Sullivan concert. It wasn't like I was playing a recital someplace, you know, or I was making my debut in Carnegie Hall or anything like that. It was a specialized kind of concerts, you know. And used to play um also, I used to play for Jewish benefits, you know, for the u J And they knew about me, you know, because the whole organization, the Jewish organization knew about this Sullivan program. So they used some of the people for fundraising. And I was, you know, sometimes I was I would be called at the telephone. I would be hired to do fifteen minutes or ten minutes at the end of the fundraising, you know, and I would appear probably like eleven o'clock at night, you know, and I would play the Nygun Bay Block and the Flight of the Bumblebee and that was it. And then I would leave and and I would get I would get paid, you know, and it was it was great, you know. I played while the people were eating their desserts. And of kosher food and things like that. It wasn't the same people liked. One night, you do Flight of the Bumblebee, and somebody says he was better at Jerry's bar mitzvah, so much better. I never did bar mitzvah's. I never did bar mitzvahs, and I didn't and I didn't do weddings dding no Vedic's absolutely. You know, now, when you leave and you come to to the United States, when you left for the Sullivan trip, was it assumed you were going to go home? What did you kind of know? You knew you weren't going home. I knew that I was. I was going to stay. And my dad stayed for about a year in Israel and finished selling the apartment and thus in the business, and then he came and joined us. I even remember, you know, I did not see my dad for a year, and the only way to get in touch was through letters. And then a bit later on, you know, maybe after about five, six, seven, eight months, we actually were able to arrange for a long distance call from New York to Tel Aviv, you know. And at that time, so you're talking about nineteen fifty nine, so it was like ten o'clock in the morning, you know, on the phone rings and I hello, huh hello, that's the connection, you know, that was the connection. And you know we had absolutely and we had in our street where I lived, we had no phone. So what we had was there was a grocery store that had the telephone. So whoever want to make a long distance called, we'll go to the grocery store and we pick up. So that's that's what you knew you were going to stay. Yes, yes, I learned the language from watching TV and you know, listening to the Yankee baseball. Spoken very little English and now hardly. I took a class of English in Israel. I think I failed. But it's amazing how quickly you learned, you know, when you hear the language around you all the time, and you were you went to Julian without family years. Let's see, until I think nineteen or I was nineteen or twenty, I think, because I because I still I remember still uh doing answerts and having to go to class, and you know sometimes I was late to a class and I got hell to pay, you know, because I just took a flight from Los Angeles. Give me a break, you know, I don't know. But you didn't go an English class. You know you have to be there. So but I was, you know, so I did both things for a while and then I graduated. And where do you think your sound comes from? I don't know. I mean, I really don't know. It's it's something that I hear. You had polio old. I had pol when I was four and three quarters. So do you find that music become you imbue that with even more of your being in your spirit because you were limited in the things you could do as a child. I don't think. So I'm getting everything wrong with you everything, but that's not it. But but you're batting the los good. But you're doing good, you know, I mean, because you know no, it's no, seriously, I just I don't think so. I mean, I mean, I couldn't say to you, well, let me see how I'm playing without napolio, and now le's see how I'm playing with the polio. I can't. I can't see what I want. But I'm wondering if you that Okay, Sorry, I mean giving you such a hard time. So I'm so sorry. I mean, I knew this was coming. I've been around you a few times, it's always it's always an obstacle. Course, but anyway, the the but but you know, what I'm saying is is that do you think the spirit of the person is that relevant? No? I don't know. I love to watch people who are famously like whether it's there actors or or people in sports, and sort of try and guess what kind of people they are in private, you know, and uh, being good and being a wonderful person and being a sort of an agreeable sympathic a kind of person is not necessarily together. You know. I remember my wife always, you know, sometimes we go to a concert and we hear somebody who's absolutely amazing, and I said to become on, let's go backstage and say hello, and she said, I'd than not. You know, I don't want to be disappointed all the way this person plays. Just let's let's not do it. Let me just relax and just enjoy it. Uh. You many many people who conduct, and I'd love to get your opinion of this. Many people who conduct are people who have good careers as a soloist. They played typically the violino, the piano, but they don't necessarily have great careers. And then but someone taps them on the shoulders there, or you keep time very well, and they moved them on. No. But I mean, I mean, every every one that I would talk to would say that. To me, I'd say, uh, you know, doti this one they say. Somebody walked up to me when I was like ten years old and said, you keep time very well, and they moved them into the conducting program. What happened, They moved into the viola section. M that's our ad for the show. No, no, no, no, I might study that. Viola jokes are no longer applicable because the level of viola playing has really risen seriously, so that you said should be that too. No, it's really viola jokes. You know, used to be that the level was a little bit below, but right now it's brilliant. I mean, so many brilliant viola players. So it's not but it's still funny, you know, violin legend. It's a Pruman has a special place in his heart for the New York Pilharmonic. He and then music director Alan Gilbert teamed up for the Phil's opening Galla a few years ago. Here films our guest soloist. It's a filman followed by music directors an filmat Alan Delbert Gilbert found out he got the job from the Phil's president, Zarin Meta, after a particularly miserable bedtime for his toddlers. We had had a torturous night and they'd finally fall on sleep, and I got a call from Zarin Meta just after they had fallen asleep, and he said, I'd like to invite you to be our next music director. I said, my kids just fell asleep. I can't talk to him. But then I called him back and we had scene in a movie where guys like more than being the music director of the Philharmonica, I want my kids to go to sleep. Clink totally. He will. We all know the madness of that. The rest of my conversation with Conductor Alan Gilbert at Here's the Thing dot Org coming up. It sucked Perman on Alan and Gilbert's art, what makes a great conductor? Plus his wife Toby Perlman on their music school and the next generation of great masters, takes on Mendelssohn and my questions. This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing. It sacked. Perlman didn't bring his famous Strata Varius. He says playing takes more effort now than it used to. As you get older, everything becomes more difficult than more demanding. Uh oh, are you kidding me? But you know, if you do a great piece, you can do it over and over again and no matter how I mean for me. I mean a perfect example is debatedpen Violent Concerto, which is not getting any easier as you get older, because but it's not, but it's very, very difficult when you're young as well. It's I call it when when my students start the piece, I say welcome to the lifetime journey, because that's what it is. You know, you start to play and it's pretty good, and then you played again, and you played again and you grow up with it. So that's that's what music is about. In the minute you think musically like that, especially when you repeat something you're on the right track. Instead of saying, oh, I have to do that again, but you know, you have to look at the music and you have to say, this is gonna be yet another experience. You know, it's it's gonna be one way or one or another way, but it's not going to be a repetition of what I did a week ago or a month ago. When you want to sit down, assuming that you do this, I don't want to assume. But when you want to listen to someone else play the violin that you admire and you admire their sound, give us an example of somebody you listen to for pure tone. The first person that comes to mind is Friz Chrysler. You know. You you listen to old recordings of of his and you think, you know those days that you know, there wasn't there wasn't the great advancement in technology and so and that it's that you you hear scratches, you hear the tone, and you say, oh my god, that is something unbelievable, you know, or you know, menu And had a fantastic sound. I mean, everybody had a different kind of sound, but sometimes sounds it's apples and oranges, you know. I mean, but that the first person that that I hear of that kind of sound is his. You conduct, yes, and the when? When when did that they? And why it began? I tell her it's very funny. It began with the Proman Music program. Uh my wife who started this whole thing. She said to me, we're going to have a string orchestra, could you coach them? So I didn't think of myself as a conductor. I thought myself as a coach. So I picked up at pencil and conducted with the pencil, you know, because if you conduct with the baton, you're a conductor. With a pencil, you're more of a teacher, you see that, I think. And anyway, so that's actually when it started and I got some interesting again. I got some nice sounds from the orchestra. Conducting I find very mysterious, you know, because you can have four or five conductors who are absolutely excellent, and each one gives you a downbeat, and the orchestra will sound different with each What do you attribute that to? I have no idea, Thank god, what do you think makes a good conductor? Oh well, obviously knowing the score and knowing all of this things, but in the final analysis, there is a mystery as to what makes somebody conductor phrase in the orchestra play a certain way. I don't understand that. You know, a great conductor should understand what he or she wants to hear from the orchestra. So if I do, let's say a bit of a Brahms symphony. What do you say to a great orchestra who have performed that hundreds of times? How do you get the orchestra to hear pop up up and say, hey, that's really good stuff, as as as opposed to I again, you know, So that's that's that's the difference. Well, it's your it's my own rendition of what I want, what I want to hear. Now, tell everybody the idea. How did the school started? It was Toby's idea, my wife Toby's idea. It was her dream because we met in a school in a summer program during during Juliard, sure, of course, and so she started this whole thing, you know. And it was actually twenty five years ago. So this are on fifth anniversary for the program music program, and yes and uh and it was it was basically for strings, and I think we had kids come to our house in Long Island and practice scales and you know, like at eight o'clock in the morning, you said, Toby thought that was the greatest alarm clock. And but we are now in Shelter Island. The people, whether whether it's the young program or the eighteen program, are they is it free of charge? And you're raising money to pay for the whole people. We never we never, we never refused, We never refused for lack of funds. We give a lot of people scholarships and scholarships and some uh some more some lessons so on. Then some if they want to pay, they can pay. But it really doesn't matter because, you know, the the expense of the program is so that even if we were to charge everybody equally, will still be in the in the red severely, severely, believe me, severely. But it's great. And the program has not grown on purpose. You know, we started with about thirty eight thirty nine kids and we still have thirty a thirty nine kids for the little program. And it's and and it's amazing, it's crazy. It's very difficult to describe unless you go there and just give the experience. We have kids playing twice a week works in progress we call it whips, you know, where they try new pieces in front of an audience and so on. It's it's it's great and I've been listening during the summers. I don't play concerts. I just teach there and with with other great, great faculty, and we have you know, the philosophy of a lack once you're in that program, a lack of competition between the kids. You know, they all support each other, and for me, that's so important. You know that that you know when somebody plays well, they're truly happy for them, and when somebody messes up, they go and they console them and they really feel for them. It's it's it's a it's a real Family's so important, it's a great father. It's our problem's wife, Toby Proman, please come and join us, Toby, and please welcome Rachel Lee Friday and Mandal Gooseby. No, no, we're gonna bring out six other people who've been playing the violin since they were eighteen months old. Let's get them out here, and then when we're done performing, we're gonna end. We're gonna end with this music. Can they come? Great? That was itsa Proman, his wife and Proman Music program founder Toby and their brilliant violin students Rachel Lee Priday and Randal Gooseby. The Artists who made up the octet were Rachel and Randall, plus Stellick Shan and Kenneth Renshaw also on violin, Charley Smith and Joshua Chale on viola, Nico Olarte Hayes and iach N Sue on cello. The piece was the presto from Mendelssohn's arctet Opus twenty in E flat major, recorded live at n y US Screwball Center in Manhattan, and now My Conversation with Renee Fleming from two thousand twelve. Renee Fleming has a powerful effect on people. Conductor Sir George Shoalty described the opera singer's voice as double cream. Garrison Keeler said she made his nostrils twitch. New York chef Daniel Blue created a signature dessert to honor her. But Renee Fleming is down to earth. When the People's Diva, as she's been called, went to Paris to rehearse Handle's Alcina, one of her favorite roles, she spent most of the first week looking for playgrounds for her two young daughters. Renee grew up in Rochester, New York, where both her parents were high school music teachers. During the first two years of her life, while in her playpen, Renee would listen while her mother gave singing lessons. A few years later, Renee organized a barbershop trio with her younger sister and brother. One might say Renee Fleming was born into music. Often refer to myself as an indentured servant because we grew up with it. My parents were both We all sang all the time. You take a family cross country trip and be singing the road signs and in harmony, and I thought everybody did that. I just like, oh, well, this is what families do. Your friends would get in the car with your family and was like, with these crazy Flemings exactly singing to the trees, missing to the exit signs. And we talked about singing. Did you feel like this was your way to communicate with your own parents? Well, interestingly, my dad was a big jazz fan. My mother didn't bring music home much at all. She wanted to break from it when she came home. Other than when we performed, she prepared us. You know. I think her idea was that we would be the next one traps. You know. My father, thank god, put the kabashion then and said, I don't think so. Um. Let me guess your mother was the competitive one. She she was very type AI, you know, she's check and my my grandmother and my aunts were all like this. I mean, they would come over and they just the work ethic was unbelievable. I think I work hard. No no, no, no no no. They used to look at me and say, you know, and a you're you really need to step it up. And I see myself doing the same thing with my two daughters. So I can't. I sort of can't help it. But the music thing, you know, it was just so natural for us, and my way of rebelling against it was to find my own music. So I became a composer in middle school. I started writing songs and then play piano, played piano, I played guitar. And what kind of music did you write? You're like Johnny Mitchell was sort of singer what we call now singer songwriter, But I also wrote art songs that I actually notated and wrote out that other people sang. In that time, women weren't particularly encouraged to be composers. In a different setting, that might have been the direction I would have gone in, because I loved it and it suited my temperament much better than performing. I was so shy. Performing was so far away from whoeverly was um A specific opera, the first opera if you can recall because I remember the first movie I went to see in a movie theater. What was the first opera that you became a you know, I would say, gosh, sure Angelica. This is what I remember because my mother performed it and we were in the first row, and this is the Eastman Theater. So first of all, I was incredibly impressed by the theater, this massive chandelier, you know, all the velvet. I mean I took up violin because of the velvet in the case. So we were nothing if not superficial. I guess, you know. I didn't really know anything about the story, but she was crying, and she was crying because she was singing about, you know, her her dead baby and wanting to be joined with her baby again, and looking at her three children in front of her. Somehow, I think that really impressed me. Did you ever imagine at that time, it in the middle school and you're seeing this piece, that that would be a path for you, that you would end up where you are now. Gosh, No, nobody really asked kids in those days, what do you want exactly? What would you like to do? You just went along. I know so many people in my generation who applied to three colleges and never gave it much thought. And really, you know, the way we raised children now is world's apart from how we were raised. How do you feel, we said, how do you feel? My parents couldn't give a damn how I felt. No, Really, the only thing I thought that I wanted to be was the president. So there was i'd say, a colonel of ambition there in the world I was in. It was, you know, doctor lawyer, or a few of a more working class background, a job that gave you a security and a pension, the Long Island Railroad, the police department, the fire department. You know, you learned very quickly to choose from the menu actor was not on the menu that was submitted to me. Well, I wanted to muse again, like my parents, So that's another thing you did. You followed your parents because you couldn't think of anything else to do. And then when the singing became more interesting, and particularly jazz um, when I really found myself through singing with it in a club every weekend for two and a half years, then my parents got nervous. Oh, it's so hard, it's too competitive. What happens when you're you're writing songs, popular music. And whenever you know where you said singer songwriter, whether it's Carol King or what have you, and you're singing jazz in nightclubs, in Rochester clubs, they're knowing Potsdam where I went to undergraduate. Score is Potsdam a hotbed of jazz. It's a college hotbed. And the drinking age was twenty one. So yes, so we all spent a lot of time in clubs. In this particular Algiers Pub had very high quality jazz all the time. And the guys that I worked with are are all working musicians. It was an extraordinary education for me in many many ways. I mean, that's how we learned. That's how I was able to embrace performing. Because Illinois Jacked heard me sing in pot Salmon said why don't you come on the road, but come to New York and yes, it's great tenor saxophone player was really going to put me on the map as a jazz singer. And I just knew I didn't have the courage. You could have been a popular singer. You could have what where do you take the term you're just saying, I'm going to operate? Is it now? What happened. Had I grown up in New York City, the singer songwriter thing might have opened. Doors might have opened. I mean, I sang on television in high school winning some talent show, literally playing a song that I wrote. Making the decision to go on undergraduate school. That's sort of solidified. Graduate school was where so you went from costom, you went back home. Then I tried to pursue jazz, and and that didn't work. Despite the fact that Eastman had a phenomenal jazz department, I just couldn't get in. I couldn't break in. So, you know, it was really circumstance that pushed me towards classical music, and eventually I really embraced it. And the other thing is I realized it was much more suited to my temperament. I liked being in the practice room. I liked studying. I enjoyed wrestling with this instrument harder. I don't know that it was harder, but it was more internal, kind of cerebral work. You know. The interesting thing about jazz or anything popular, you see, it was a very personality driven and I just didn't have that. I think I do now. Interestingly, I've come out of my shell. I mean when I tell people I was extremely shy that nobody believes me now to overcome yes, exactly. You know. I found a lot of comedians to be extraordinarily serious and and draws withdrawn sometimes, So yeah, I think sometimes we overcome things by going after the very thing that really a loud to us. So certainly my case that was it. I would observe friends who were comfortable performing and I would just try to act like them, So that was that worked. It's an impersonation. Someone said to me, how do you perform in the theater, like why is the theater so soothing to you? And I say, because I know that for two and a half hours and know exactly where I'm going to be, exactly what I'm going to say, exactly what you're going to say, and exactly how a roomful of people are going to react to what I say. And you don't feel performance pressure because I had terrible stage, right. I do feel the pressure in rehearsal. I feel the pressure to unearthed, to get down to it and get the work done. And if I feel that we got the work done, then it's orgasmic, you know, Like I go out there in front of the only thing. I'm like, well, how's everybody doing? You know, I'm like, really, I'm very happy, comfortable. Yeah, I think they're gonna like it if I go out there. And I'm a little bit hesitating because I'm thinking, I don't think we got it. But you do two years at Eastman and graduate degree there, then what happens? And I went to Juilliard, Uh did postgrad. I could be a doctor or a lawyer as long as I was in Juilliard at the time the American Opera Center so now the Juilliard Opera Center, I believe it was a post graduate program. I was cast as Mozetta in Labo m So I came here to sing a role. You get free lessons, coaching, all of the support that we couldn't otherwise afford. You know, you're a beginner. And I worked in Rocket Feller Plaza for a law firm, pay my rent and everything, and it was a great year. It was a phenomenal year. Say to yourself, why didn't I do this sooner? Yeah? Yes, because I was so happy, and I was running around the city like a maniac, so active. And then I took a full right grant and studying in Germany and that was hard. How were you there in Frankfort. It was important. It was probably one of the most crucial pieces in my education because it was so challenging. Number one challenging. I didn't speak a word of German when I went there. I was in the whole chield for musique and was not accepted into the opera department, which was very disappointing to me at the time. I cried the whole way there, literally sobbing yes, And my boyfriend at the time, who became my husband, said well, you know, don't not go because of me, And I remember thinking, God, that would be the furthest thing from my mind. I was so kind of self possessed, but also clueless about the choices I was making. That's why I wrote a book for young singers, because if young singers are any one of them like I was, you just don't know what you're getting into. But I was also very lucky because that year turned out to be a very formative experience. I mean, learning to speak fluent German. How many languages do you speak fluent? Well, I studied French in high school like many of us did. That was, you know, the language. Paris is my second home, and I sang there every year for a long time, so my French is when I'm there, it picks up again and it's but German is even more fluent and consistent. During that year. You learned to speaking fluently in that one year. You know, I love the study of learning and of memory, because what I've discovered is that at the end of that year my German was okay, was good, you know. But every year, every time I go back, it gets better and I don't have to speak a word of German in between. So the brain, those neurons keep firing. Then you come back to Julliard. Yes, then I come back to Juilliard. I tried to stay in Germany. I tried to stay there and get work. No one would have me, so I came back in my career started here. Then, how well, I had a rough couple of years of sort of no man's land, which is very common with singers between education and the start of career. It's very common for all of us, really, all musicians, you know, And there's this catch twenty two where you can't get management unless they can go here. You perform, but you can't get a job. Don't get managed in the acting world. Okay, call me when you're in a show and welcome here. That's the manager you're trying to get. So competitions were the thing that helped me. And one of the competitions exactly for me. It was the met competition, and it took me three times, but I finally won. All of a sudden the doors opened. But it took about a year and a half. I'd say things went slowly. The first and the first and the first paid, legit professional job you have was doing what the first real engagement was in the Houston Grand Opera and it was the Marriage of Figaro, and that really put me on the map, and that described so important. I had never sung the opera in Italian, I had singing in English. So I went to rehearse with really seasoned professionals, I mean people who were big opera stars already, and I was a beginner, you know. The first day of rehearsal Thomas Allen, in particular, Sir Thomas Allen, He's got such an intelligence and a sophistication about his portrayal of all of these mozart in here herees he's still performing I think at the World Opera, I was just jelly at the end of the first rehearsal because I thought I can't even keep up with him. MOLTI Reachativa is really hard. Imagine doing very quick dialogue in a foreign language that you don't speak, really and I learned. You know, when you're young, you just you just you do what you have to do to keep up. I lifted the car off my baby because I had to lift the car. And when you get these opportunities, you have to rise to the occasion and take a risk and get out there and really make it work, or you don't get the opportunity again. You know, it's so competitive the field. I think all my horseback riding and doing horse shows as a kid really prepared me for that. And when when the curtain, I don't need to be so plodramatic, but the world you live in that kind of lends itself. That's when the curtain comes down and the shows, the first shows, ever, how did you feel? Well? You know, it's unfortunately too long ago from me to remotely remember that, but you know, I can tell you there was a euphoria in those early experiences, a sense of happiness and relief when I would go from one engagement to the other. You know, our world, we never stop, so there's no sort of you do the project and then you take a break. It's a big blur. It's just after that, it's a blur, and it's like it's all one big episode of a TV show. To me, now two things. One is more tangible than the other. Someone Melanie Griffith Yers have I said to me that every role you play is the chance to bury that part of yourself that you don't like. And the other thing I find is that when God wants to make fun of me and to mock me, I'll get a script and what's going on with that character is exactly what's going on right right, And I'll read the script and it's almost God to say to me, see right, stupid it looks when it's on paper. I have felt that a lot of times when I've been in any kind of conflict or struggle, somehow the repertoire that I'm performing has just coincidentally mirrored it in a way that's been healing. Let's say healing. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing today with Renee fleming in your work, because in my work it's not this way. You can't do what you do unless you summon up some reservoir of the deepest, deepest passion to sing these roles effectively. Think of a role you've you've performed where even you sat there and go, God, this is killing me. We just came out of you like you couldn't believe it. Kim out of it, you know there, Well, there are two sides of it. One is the vocal. One one is this feeling that you know I'm in the right place at the right time to be singing this, and you know your voice well. The voice is such an evolving instrument. So when I sang Tais, for instance, at the met some years ago, and had these spectacular costumes from Christian Loqua, you just thought the stars have aligned to make this role of suit me perfectly right now. I love singing in French. I love Massine the way it lies, the character, the fact that you know, the psychological drama and this opera where these two people completely changed places with each other. That was a case certainly where I just thought, you know, and I was going to do it again and somebody stopped and said, do you want to sing it again in five years if it's not as good as it was this time? And I said, you're right, I'm not going to I'm not going to risk that it was It was perfect. I mean it was. I couldn't do it better. So it's not very often I can say that I couldn't do it better. Someone else maybe could do it better. Different It was the best that I could do. How have opera audience has changed during your career at all? I think the challenge we face in opera in general, and I would say forget opera and classical music is really exposure. It used to be that we had exposure obviously in schools. We had exposure through churches and through our families. Every socially climbing family got a piano, uh and and felt that a musical education was part when arts education was part of their children's, you know, the betterment of their lives, and that you know it is what it is. It is. It is gone. It's just simply people don't feel it's relevant anymore. It makes my heart when you say that, But it's true when you do a show, when you're performing a piece what's the day like for you? You go to the theater and do you have us do do people in your future of like a warm up? You do? Is there a well I know nothing about vocal I try to vocalize earlier in the day because I find that it's better for me a little bit. Just kind of see where it's at. You know, some things, Drinking certain things I have to be careful about. I love caffeine, you know. I would drink coffee all day and I have to be careful about that because it's dehydrating. So I have my typical so and you have to force fluids a little bit, which I hate too. So these are the boring things, but not really good people I think are just interested in what kind of the discipline is complex? Yea, most people can't control what they eat and drink. There's a little bit of that, having the humidifier on, making sure it's a lot about you know, moisture. These are all mucous membranes. The vocal folds are very sensitive, and you want to go in to that performance with them being super healthy and not dried out. We're the Olympians of singers, really, and you will have a three to five hour long performance and that takes a lot of physical stamina. Yeah, it's a lot of physical stamina. Plus you're emotionally all over the place, you know, as you said it to very But it's mainly the amount of sound we have to produce to be heard over the orchestra and the chorus in a huge hall. That's the thing that that is different. And if we sing well, if we sing technically well, we should be able to get up the next day and sound normal. You know, people will go to sports events and scream at you know, the other team or even there if the people they like and their horse. The next day. We can't do that. We're doing the same thing, but we're doing it in the trained way, and you know, it is a hard art form to get right. There are all these elements and it's live. But when it's right, it's it's amazing. Oh. Renee Fleming says she's looking forward to getting some rest, although it's not clear when that will come. In addition to her busy performance schedule, she recently became the creative consultant for the Lyric Opera in Chicago. They just announced an upcoming world premier opera based on the bestseller Bell Conto, and she's been advocating for more arts education in schools. It's not just for people to be consumers of the artists, for them to also participate, find the creative voices, and build confidence through participation. My thanks to it's a promin at Renee Fleming. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought to you by my Heart Radio.