A beguiling self-portrait of a great artist at work.
Though the renowned soprano mostly discusses singing here, her perceptive account of what it takes to become and continue to be a great performer will resonate with all those who dream big.
First-time author Fleming recalls her experiences with agreeable frankness, but she favors tracing her education as a singer over breathlessly reprising her past. The Inner Voice is primarily about music, though she mentions with appreciation the influence of her musician parents and describes her husband, their painful divorce, and their two daughters. “Not just natural talent and hard work, but tenacity, resilience, and luck” make a singer, Fleming writes, and she had plenty of all five. Tracing her path from high school in Rochester, New York, where she starred in productions of My Fair Lady, to the Metropolitan Opera, she ruefully recalls the nerves and self-consciousness that once led her to fall apart on stage when auditioning for the Met National Council Auditions, which were designed to help promising singers. But she never thought of quitting as she struggled with these fears, and though there were setbacks she was accepted at Juilliard, awarded a Fulbright to study in Germany with the famous Elisabeth Schwartzkopf, and given opportunities to sing at La Scala and the Met. As she notes these achievements, Fleming offers advice on how to treat the voice itself, on choosing the right teacher (you need an unerring intuition about whether the instruction suits your needs), on learning to act; and, given today’s realities, on the business side of maintaining a great career. Singers, she notes, need able advisers who will not only secure engagements at the great opera house and major concerts halls, but also recording contracts and TV appearances. Her advice and insights are seasoned with recollections of great singers she has known, from Renata Scotto to Luciano Pavarotti.
A beguiling self-portrait of a great artist at work.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-03351-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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