The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer (21 page)

My own recording career got its big boost after I stepped into the role of Fiordiligi for Sir Georg Solti. He suggested to his label’s new vice president of artists and repertoire, Evans Mirageas (who, along with Bettie Buccheri, a pianist for the Chicago Symphony, had recommended me for the engagement in the first place), that I be signed up as an exclusive artist for Decca. Evans asked my London manager, Tom Graham, if I had a recording contract and was told with emphasis, “Not yet.” That contract came into being over the course of two telephone conversations between Evans and Tom, but the actual signing took much longer. RCA and Decca were both interested in me, and I was in the enviable position of having to choose between the two. I went with Decca.

Having an exclusive recording contract with a record label is a delicate arrangement. Often the payoff doesn’t come until the second or third recording. No one wants to make a supreme effort and investment in an artist’s early recordings, only to see the artist taking the benefits of that promotion and support to another label. Fortunately for me, the senior management at Decca and its parent, Universal Classics, and I were ultimately in total agreement on this point. I believe that I’m now seen as one of the label’s core artists, who has continuing long-term sales potential. In turn, I’ve learned that besides recording, my contribution is in the promotion of my recordings, which includes seeking out the kind of celebrity that goes beyond the classical audience. Of the group of people who are available to purchase a classical recording—that is, those who have been exposed to classical music before—5 percent will probably purchase one of my recordings. The next 15 percent who like classical music will purchase something if it catches their attention, and the next 25 percent will purchase the Three Tenors, Andrea Bocelli, or popular classics such as the Beethoven Ninth. The remaining people simply won’t buy classical music; it isn’t going to happen.

Therefore, it’s necessary to invest in publicity, even if it means that I spend my own money, trying to take myself above the usual level attained by core classical artists. The only way I’ll reach that other 25 percent of potential buyers is to appear on, say, the
Late Show with David Letterman
or perform at such events as the lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way. If I don’t maintain my sales, I can’t continue to record, and recording is the only chance I have to reach that larger audience and to keep my art alive after I’ve stopped performing. It’s also something I genuinely enjoy. What a luxury to spend a week in the studio focused solely on the music, with no uncomfortable costumes, no worrying about the public or the critics, no wondering if I’ll forget the text, or how the lighting is—just an unadulterated collaboration with musicians and composers I admire.

My performing career and my recording career dovetail and reinforce each other. It’s been a slow and steady climb, but at least it’s always been a climb. Making recordings enables me to communicate with people, many more people than would ever have the chance to hear me sing. I’m not sure I have a definitive answer for why that is important to me, but it is. Perhaps it’s wanting to re-create the wonder I felt when hearing recordings as a young singer and hoping that someday I would sound just like them. Perhaps it’s just part and parcel of my personality, the need to continually strive and improve, which seems such an integral part of my being. Or perhaps it’s simply the excitement of continuing to grow.

 

There are ominous signs about the future of classical music. The record companies are facing threats from piracy and unauthorized downloading. It’s important for those of us who have achieved success to speak out for the choristers and violinists, and beginning artists who won’t have work at all if the piracy continues. I asked Christopher Roberts, president of Universal Classics and Jazz, if I could interview him about technology and the future of the recording industry for this chapter. He has been the only continuing thread throughout my relationship with Decca, and it was his support some years back that helped turn the company in my favor. So many dire predictions abound right now about the future of recording: studio recordings will cease to exist altogether; the large labels will collapse and only small and budget labels will survive the illegal downloading and piracy crisis; operas will be available only on live recordings and DVDs or will be streamed live via the Internet around the world.

Chris explained that the recording industry has historically been driven by new technology, from wax to the electronic microphone, from the 78 to the long-playing record, and most recently the development of digital recording and the compact disc. I joined the company at the end of an enormous wave of sales, as the public scurried to replace their LPs with the smaller, indestructible disc with digital quality. The future savior of the market appears to be the Internet, the beauty of which is that it offers unlimited choice. Traditionally, recordings are kept in or eliminated from each label’s catalog based on their ability to earn more than their basic upkeep. Imagine, though, a digital catalog available on the Internet that includes every available recording ever made. As Chris explained, though, before a piece can appear on iTunes, it has to be compressed in digital format. That’s an initial expense at a time when people are skeptical about undertaking expenses without being assured of the future. At Universal, one thousand out of four thousand tracks are on iTunes. The acceptance of this technology is still in its early stages, but Chris predicts it will grow within five years. China especially may prove to be an enormous market, given its public’s appreciation for, knowledge of, and awareness of classical music, and its huge media outlets. The downside of the technology is piracy. Chris doesn’t see retail sales disappearing altogether, even though they are shrinking and are certainly under pressure. Anything but a hit-driven CD is being replaced with DVDs, in general, and that applies to classical, jazz, new age, and soundtracks as well. The same choice offered in the area of recorded music can also exist in the domain of performances. Imagine tuning into a recital in Tokyo just by turning on your computer. Most radio lovers have already discovered this feature on the Web for music alone, and it’s just a matter of time before the picture follows.

The music itself will never disappear. Beethoven still makes people cheer, Richard Strauss can thrill, and Mozart can even develop young minds. It’s our responsibility to learn how to speak to an audience that is less informed about music, to give it a reason to want to come and see us instead of going to the movies. For me and for the rest of the industry, it’s going to take hard work and a lot of creative thinking. But then, thinking creatively is our business.

 

 

 

 

M
Y BELOVED Beverley Johnson died in January of 2001, after suffering from a serious illness the year before. In some ways those long months helped me and the tenor Anthony Dean Griffey to prepare for what was to come. Tony was like a surrogate son to Beverley, and we both took shifts at the hospital. Mary Lou Falcone came to visit and wisely counseled me to ready myself for losing not only my friend but my teacher. Yet it was even more than that: I was losing my touchstone.

“Maybe one imagines that people expect more of us than they really do,” she wrote to me in 1999. “I think, by and large, your public has come to love you and they are happy just hearing your voice, just as it is. So I wish I could help you believe that it is there for you to call on. You have nurtured it and been good to it, so it won’t let you down. I know for sure that this is true. I get so awkward when I try to tell you how much I respect what you have accomplished and what you are doing.”

Amazingly, Beverley remained active right up until the end of her life. She gave me a lesson on December 23, a day I still remember so clearly, as she lay on the couch and just listened to me sing, and in her deep blue eyes there was so much wonderful joy, so much strength. Singing meant more to Beverley than to anyone else I’ve ever known. I brought the girls by the next day to wish her a merry Christmas Eve, and she was visibly tired. She clearly hadn’t been well, and a few days later I checked her into Columbia Presbyterian hospital. I told her I would pick her up to take her there, but she insisted on meeting me at the hospital. This was a woman who didn’t want anyone doing anything for her. She couldn’t stand having a nurse in her home and didn’t want to be taken care of, for she just couldn’t bear to be weak. She was going to live her life to the fullest, and when she couldn’t do it her way anymore, that would be it. When I got to the hospital I found her sitting in a wheelchair in the waiting room, looking terribly small, a scarf wrapped around her head. “I’m coming here to die,” she said to me sadly.

Her last three weeks were especially painful for me, not only because it was clear that she was dying but because in those final days she pushed me away. I was rehearsing a
Live from Lincoln Center
telecast at the time, and in retrospect, given Beverley’s condition, I wonder if I should just have canceled it. But it was imminent, and everyone was relying on me to come through. Every day I would leave rehearsals and go straight to the hospital on my way home to Connecticut, and though at times I’d arrive as late as two o’clock in the morning Beverley was usually awake. She would look at me for a second and then stare up at the ceiling. “Oh, Miss Fleming is here. Miss Fleming has come for a visit,” she would say, for she spoke of me only in the third person then. She was so angry at me, or maybe it wasn’t directed at me so much as at her awareness that she was dying. I would sit by her bed in the middle of the night and try to talk to her, and sometimes I would be quiet and touch her hand. I felt how strongly she wanted to live, to stay and to help me through
Traviata,
to help Tony through Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, a piece her husband, Hardesty Johnson, had premiered in America. She wanted to remain involved in our lives, and we wanted the same.

In mid-January I had to make a trip to Europe. Yet again, I was following the old dictates of “should”: I should go to London, and I should meet my obligations instead of staying close by. Two days after I left, she died of pneumonia. Tony called and told me she was very peaceful in the end. She was taking a great deal of pain medication by then, for she had cancer, though we hadn’t known. We hadn’t known, either, that she was ninety-six. I was scheduled to sing the Verdi Requiem that night but called my manager in London and said, “I’m sorry—this is just impossible.”

“You have to do it,” he told me. “It’s a live telecast, and we don’t have anyone to replace you.”

I learned that night that it’s possible to set aside whatever else is going on in my life and play the part. I have no memory of that concert; it was as if I were not even present, and yet so many people have come up to me since then and told me how moved they were by the performance, how much it had meant to them.

It took me a long time to get over Beverley’s feelings toward me when she died, as I struggled with missing her and tearing myself up over everything I could have done differently. A friend told me his mother had done the same thing to him, and that sometimes people push away the very ones they love the most because they can’t bear to leave them. Whether or not that was the case with Beverley, it was a comforting explanation of why things went so badly between us during that last month. Beverley had been such an extraordinary influence in my life, believing in me when I was going nowhere, and giving me a clear perspective when life seemed to pull me in a hundred different directions. She had helped me find my voice, teaching me how to shape it, how to expand it, and how to coax it back when part of it got away from me. She provided me with a consistent thread through so many inconsistent times. I felt at once grateful for ever having found her in the first place and, at the same time, heartbroken to have lost her.

 

There have certainly been moments when my voice has failed me, when it has seemed capricious and unreliable. But there have been other times, like the night of Beverley’s death, when my voice has been a true friend, carrying me rather than my carrying it. The fragility of the voice is in many instances due to its being tied so strongly to the mind. Dealing with vocal problems is not always as straightforward an issue as simply dealing with a technical shortcoming, for confidence and trust also come into play. Trust has everything to do with my ability to go onstage certain that when my mind tells my voice to do something, it’s going to happen. It’s hearing a phrase in the mind’s ear and then knowing the body can reproduce that phrase a split second later. Without that trust—without taking it for granted that I can sing the notes fast enough or execute a particularly high passage or produce a diminuendo in the score—I really have nothing. Without confidence, my body’s muscles would just get in the way of expression, leaving me subject to clutching, grabbing and holding, and other faults that singers try so hard to eradicate.

If I have to hold a note for a very long time, I imagine it as moving and spinning, for the note has to have life. In a way, a singer actually refreshes a note with every beat that it’s held. Once the hammer hits the string in a piano, there’s no way to retrieve the tone. There’s absolutely nothing the greatest pianist in the world can do to keep that sound from dying away. That’s the nature of the instrument. Like any wind instrument, however, the voice can sustain a tone as long as the breath stays actively engaged. As soon as any sort of holding occurs as the result of muscular tension, it reveals itself as a glitch in the sound. Sometimes it’s a pitch problem (the note will go flat or sharp) and other times it’s a problem in the tone quality (the vibrato will slow down or speed up, and the note will lose its beauty and evenness). When any such problems develop, the secret to a long-lasting career is to stop singing for a while. It’s a tough decision to make when you have a mortgage to pay, or you don’t feel as if you can disappoint an audience, or you don’t want to lose a part in a particular production. Still, no matter how high-profile the performance, its benefits have to be weighed against the longevity of the voice. Keeping the voice in as healthy condition as possible for as long as possible is a concern that hangs over a singer’s head every day of his or her career.