Smart soprano

American singer Renee Fleming’s book “The Inner Voice” has been published.

Among professional musicians there is a joke as old as time: a good singer must be absolutely brainless so that the wind, as they say, can blow through his head, because his (her) head resonator must work well. A joke is a joke, but, judging by the singing of many domestic nightingales, it contains a dangerously large percentage of truth. Renee Fleming's book is exactly the opposite example of Russian practice; it is a compact biographical work of a man who thinks about every note he sings and strictly subordinates the birth of any sound to iron logic and rational thinking. The work created by the singer is only formally another singing biography with a strict sequence: childhood - youth - years of study - first failures - first successes - the beginning of fame - its zenith, etc. It is also unusual that this biography is written not long ago by an opera diva who left the stage, but by a prima donna in her prime - now the name Fleming is thundering throughout the world, she receives engagements only on the most prestigious stages, her albums are showered with all kinds of awards, and People magazine includes her on the list of the 50 most influential people in the United States. What made her take up the pen was the desire to share not her “combat merits” (Fleming will probably have even more of them in the future than in the past), but her accumulated experience - how to grow her own voice from scratch and reveal it to the maximum.

Accordingly, the book contains a lot of discussions about vocal subtleties that will be of interest primarily to young singers, but not only to them. However, it contains even more practical considerations on the topic of an opera career and a career in art in general - and it is this perspective that represents the main intrigue and value of the book. Fans of Cinderella stories about boys and girls kissed by God, who have been given a wondrously beautiful voice since childhood and who are waiting for a chance from fate to show it to the world, will be severely disappointed. In today's world, the natural talent of a singer (at least 50% of success, as was recently taught in Russian conservatories) plays a negligible role in the final result. Other components are exhausting work on yourself and your voice, searching for good teachers and coaches, studying foreign languages, stage movement, dancing, acting, knowledge of etiquette and rules of the game in the opera business, business acumen, wrestling qualities, the ability to lose, but not putting your head down, the ability to take a hit, going on stage sick, and, finally, luck. Renee Fleming herself seems to be fully endowed with all this, but this does not mean that she mastered all of the above at once. Learning from her mistakes is an extremely noble proposal on Fleming's part and provides an opportunity to see the brilliant world of modern opera from the inside and understand how it functions.

Reading easily, humorously written essays, arranged in short chapters and beautifully translated into Russian, you simultaneously catch valuable observations made by Fleming over the years of work on herself, about her own status as primadonna assoluta. They can also be quite surprising to all those for whom opera memoirs are limited, for example, to the book of Galina Vishnevskaya. Having ascended to the top of the opera Olympus, you should sacredly honor its laws: do not allow yourself to be a minute late for rehearsal, always thoroughly know your part and the parts of your partners, respect the work of every person around you, from the prop master to the ticket inspector, and never turn up your nose . In general, be like everyone else. If you like, this is the secret of success in today's opera.

Mikhail FIKHTENGOLTS