Life’s Work: An Interview with Renée Fleming

Fleming: It was all due to opportunity. I had a terrific education: Eastman School of Music, a Fulbright scholarship to study in Germany, and then Juilliard. I think all young people should study abroad if they can. It’s one of those horizon-opening experiences that changes your life. It made me step-by-step more passionate about learning how to sing well, and then discovering European history and its three centuries of music, and then exploring how to sing in many languages. I found that I like to be intellectually and musically challenged, and it was a phenomenal cultural education.