Imposing and vibrant, Sara Fleming He exercises unique magnetism through his voice and his figure. Each performance of this soprano and artist, in spaces as diverse and unconventional as the altar of a church, the cover of a break or an art museum, has the strange virtue of moving and electrifying that audience, also so eclectic and varied that is hypnotized before its presence. His secret perhaps is that joyful and effusive rattlesnake, the expressive joy that demonstrates someone who, despite obstacles and times, managed to turn his passion into action. A vocation with pleasure to perseverance of a wild voice that few were encouraged to tame. Cosmopolitan and citizen of the world, born in Lenox Hill, Manhattan, for the work of his father, diplomat Juan Eduardo Fleming, his first home during his childhood was the Argentine embassy in London, a place where he lived in contact with personalities of culture and art and where he could find his artistic vein. However, no one trusted the power of his voice, and his was an arduous journey that took more than a decade to get to fulfill that dream early to become the lyrical singer who today excites in each presentation. In dialogue with news, the soprano recounts the difficult path traveled to find her voice.
News: When was the first time that it was heard singing?
Sara Fleming: When I lived in England and I was six years old, at school they always asked me to do things with my voice, from reading in the events, acting or singing in the choir or as a soloist.
News: Why did you sing?
Fleming: I come from a family loving culture and art. My paternal great -grandmother was the owner of the classic radio in Chile, a mother who is a photographer, always had fascination with painting and symphonic pianists, and on the other hand, Dad, who uses her role in diplomacy and had the doors of the embassy always open to spread art and culture, is a fan of opera. I terrified in London with four years, and my parents immediately took me to Covent Garden to see “Figaro’s weddings”, I was still very small, so obviously I fell asleep. But at my nine years, when the movie was released ”La Traviata”, by Franco Zeffirelli, they took me to the movies and this time I hit me so much that when I returned home I wrote in my diary that all I wanted in life was to be like Violetta Valéry, the protagonist, who played Teresa Stratas.
News: He spent his entire childhood in England, from 80 to 88, during part of those years was the Falklands War, how did he live it?
Fleming: When the war began we moved to the field, because my dad wanted to maintain a low profile. I was little, and the truth is that I didn’t realize anything. In 82 the diplomatic relations were broken, and Ambassador Carlos Ortiz de Rozas had to go and my dad was in charge of the embassy. He, who was always a great promoter of culture as a tool to unite the peoples, did not entrenched, but opened its doors, through which they passed from Mario Vargas Llosa to Jorge Luis Borges, from actress Maggie Smith to the pianist Bruno Gelber.
News: Adolescence in Argentina, what happened to song?
Fleming: At 18 I had to decide what I was going to do about my life, and I just wanted to sing, although my parents wanted to study a more traditional career. At that time, my father came to see me from Germany, where he was destined, and asked my musical comedy professor if I could be an opera singer, because that was my passion, to which he, who was a frustrated baritone of the Columbus, replied: “The maximum that her daughter will be able to do is sing for her friends.” It was horrible, and barely said it closed my throat.
News: What did that “no” in your life mean?
Fleming: Seven years of my life swarming for three different careers, in three different universities, without finishing any. I did a year of international relations because I wanted to be diplomatic as a dad. But as I had to do another career to exercise, I went to public relations. There I went to live in Paris for a year, because I wanted to end in La Sorbonne, but I returned and changed to business administration at the UBA. In the background I realized that it was not my thing, already hidden I escaped to sing, to Gianni Siccardi, a musician who lived in Guardia Vieja and Gascón. When he listened to me he told me “Sara Vos you have a very large voice that is like a raw diamond, you have to polish it to realize the beauty she has.” He was the only one who believed in me. But he died, and I stayed as an orphan.
News: Because theirs was natural there was no training
Fleming: The voice is perfected, but music must be studied seriously. I studied and trained for almost a decade, but I was 28, recently married (with Raúl González Llamazares) and was bogged down in a vocational crisis because the song was relegated to the hobby place and continued to take singing classes like an amateur. Until one day I told my therapist: “I want to sing.” And she told me: “Finally, every time you talk about song, you will empower yourself.” My husband supported me in my dream.
News: Finally he could develop that hidden vocation
Fleming: Yes, but with my big voice, with many serious and acute, some told me that I was a mezzo -soprano, others, which was soprano. So I spent several years, until thanks to a priest I traveled to Alta Gracia to meet the tenor Luis Lima, my great mentor; The Plácido Domingo Argentino.
News: His was a story of pure perseverance
Fleming: The typical story of no and no, which in the end is what it had to be. I have cried seas listening to the Aria de Turandot alone and thinking that one day it can be for me. Between the desire and the desire that someone finally confirmed me what I had been wishing for so long.
News: Did you feel angry for having followed your vocation late?
Fleming: I felt that I lost time, but I’m still in the race. There is still time for opera. If you are in you and want it, nothing can shut you up. Even if they put stones on the way, if you do it, dreams are fulfilled.
News: Is the opera your great dream?
Fleming: We are in that, I’m still in the race. I want to bring joy and emotion to people, and if he got it with an opera, he will love it. If I achieve it I will be very happy, but if I do it in another place and with another music I am also happy. All I want is to get to the public, that after listening to me they leave differently: if I get excited who listens to me that the work is done, but I did not achieve anything.
News: Would your last challenge be the Columbus?
Fleming: It would be a spectacular gold brooch. I am aimed, but before I have three dates at the Liberty Palace with Víctor Laplace and Ricardo Cinally
News: It is seen singing for benefits, parties, diverse rhythms and with characters such as actor Víctor Laplace or chef Donato Di Santis. He likes to go beyond the lyrical …
Fleming: I love eclecticism. I would die for doing something like Pavarotti and Friends or with electronic music. I would have loved to be like those singers who were going to sing to the troops to lift their spirits or go to a stadium to sing the anthem before a game. I sang on the Irizar deck and wanted to go to Antarctica, but it could not be because you have to be very careful with the sounds there.
News: How much did you sacrifice to achieve your dream of singing?
Fleming: I did and do a lot of sacrifices to sing. Investment in training, in teachers, the study time, the care that I must have with the voice. But I do them very happily, although sometimes my family suffers.
News: Does a work routine follow?
Fleming: Rehearsal three times a week and study singing and music in the other two days. Three days before a concert, my name is silent, I don’t go out or see anyone, I leave the Celu. They say that singing is a priesthood and there is some of that, but with my perseverance, mine was a pilgrimage!
News: At 37 he began his counselor career, why?
Fleming: Because I wanted to interpret my characters better, understand them, I did not want to judge them but to empathize and act from them, I was always very interested in the human soul and I am a good “listener”, so when I received, I realized that I not only wanted to study it to improve my art, but also to help people. So I started working with dyslexic teenagers [su hijo Gabriel fue diagnosticado a los 14 años]and over time, together with two partners, we create a dyslexia training for counselors and give accompaniment and training courses. I still exercise, but the song has more and more space in my life.
News: Who would you like to sing with?
Fleming: If I could dream madly I would like to sing with a placid Sunday, and I would also like to do the end of Turandot with the teacher Luis Lima. But since I do not close in a musical style I would also like to do something with techno music, with some DJ or who tells you with, Bizarrap himself. I am like Monserrat Caballé and I’m looking for my Freddy Mercury!
News: Does it look pop?
Fleming: Why not? A long time ago I wanted to be Barbra Streisand in my style, but I dreamed of being her. I always loved, she, Tom Jones, Freddy Mercury and Whitney Houston. What are these four in common? Everyone has opera formation. So I trained in opera and then I saw where I took me, but I stayed in the opera. I think that if it had not been trapped by the opera, it would have been a “woman show.”
