I'd always, always loved to sing as a child.

I remember singing outside, raking the leaves and making little pathways and creating a song going up and down the pathways.

I remember inviting all the family in while I sang "Whatever Lola Wants" and forcing them to sit there.

Singing was just never out of my daily life.

When Flicka walks into a room, it's like, your best friend just walked into the room, although maybe you just met for the first time.

"How do you solve a problem like Maria?

How do you catch a moonbeam in your hand?"

You know, it's, that's kind of the magic of Flicka.

She's magic.

There's no artifice in her singing, and there's no, there's not a manufactured tone.

She's not, you know, gilding the lily.

It sounds so natural.

I have an unusual voice type.

I mean, it's, they call it officially "zwischenfachen," which means "between types" and I, I really think I am a mezzo in that I'm, my voice is stronger in the middle and the lower high part.

There's not a weight, there's not a lot of weight in her sound or darkness, and yet she's always been a mezzo-soprano.

There's no, there's no, you know, question about that.

And the other thing I love is her vibrato.

There's a shimmer in her sound and in her vibrato that is very appealing to me.

It has a, a quick vibrato that really pulls you in, and there's an intensity to it.

Plus range wise, it goes from bottom to top.

And because she worked so hard on her technique, without a break anywhere, and so you never hear her shifting register, and yet each of them is so rich in color and character.

To achieve what we treasure, what feels like no bliss you can imagine is when the mechanism of a singer's throat is combined with the mechanism of their breath and their natural resonance to create what is their best sound.

I have achieved this perfect coordination, this euphoria of connecting all the pieces that make up the vocal voice production, maybe 50 times in my career.

And the other times have been a search.

Yes, sir.

She's always thinking about the other person, whether it's helping some kids with music to help them be better or helping 10 people get off the plane ahead of her because she doesn't want them to have to struggle.

That's, that's the kind of person she is.

That selfless, altruistic empathy from a natural giving place is really the best way I can describe what Flicka is about.

On the stage and off.

Working with Flicka is something that I haven't experienced before.

Understanding that she is world-renowned, but she's everyday people.

She shows up, boots on the ground.

Anything you ask, she's able to take on.

I've loved every minute of it.

I've seen some of the kids go from very young ages and I come across them when they're out in the world, professionals.

I met Flicka in kindergarten because she also helped my music program in my elementary school.

So she's seen me grow into this amazing person.

But she invests herself fully in it.

And she watches these kids grow up.

I'm sure she knows where every single one of them is and there are hundreds of them by now.

That's really what sets her apart.

I've always marveled at her great ability to show vulnerability.

That she always could manage to show the heart of that character.

[Susan] Cherubino was a perfect example.

I mean, that's why she's the best Cherubino who ever lived.

[Flicka] There's an interesting nomenclature with certain mezzo-sopranos, lyric mezzo-sopranos, and it's called "Hosenrolle" or pants roles.

And pants roles just means literally you play a boy.

I don't remember the day that I discovered singing, but I do believe that I always sang.

Probably the big kicker for me was in ninth grade at Far Hills Country Day School, we had this amazing woman named Betty Noling.

Betty was a character and she just had a way of discovering young voices and young talents.

I auditioned and sang, my first pants roll was Nanki-Poo in "Mikado" And then in high school I got more serious and I started doing summer stock and singing in little productions.

There was a school right near where I lived, I was working as a secretary, called the Mannes College of Music and to my complete and utter amazement I got in and started at Mannes doing operas on a budget of $50 a production.

And then I was dared to enter the Metropolitan Opera Auditions and I got into the Met to my utter and complete amazement.

the next night, you know, Flora, Amici, tiny, tiny, tiny roles.

Lots of maids, lots of brothers, off stage parts.

My famous debut at the Met, I debuted as one of the, the "Knaben" in "The Magic Flute."

The particular group of choristers who performed the role were spitting spitballs down on the stage and misbehaving when they were up on their swing.

And so they replaced the "Knaben" with "Frauen" or "Fraulein" three girls who would behave themselves dressed as boys.

The Met was a happy place for me to be.

I just loved going to work there.

I met Flicka when I was at a family boating event in July of 1988.

I literally was just walking across the grass through the trees and saw this young girl sitting under a tree reading a book, and I said, "Hi," and we talked back and forth for a few minutes and then I said, "Maybe I'll see you later on for a drink."

And so I went up to the bar that night and met her.

And then we all left the next day and Mike was on Spirit, his sailboat.

And I saw it right away when we were going by.

I immediately went down and put on lipstick and fixed my hair, and went up, waved at him and, you know, sort of like, "Oh!

Hi!

Fancy meeting you on the river," you know?

And so that was, that was it.

Magic time for me, very magic.

I try to remember how Flicka and I even met.

It was my first time on stage at the San Francisco Opera on the main stage, and here she was this icon, and I was scared to death of her until she said, "Hello," on the first day.

And then, you know, Flicka says hello to you, and the world is a sweet place.

From my perspective, she changed not only the trajectory of my career, but of American opera because all of a sudden people saw this great international star who was willing to take on new roles.

I was working in the PR marketing department, and you were there to do "Dangerous Liaisons."

During performances, I had started writing again, and I gave you those three folk song arrangements as an opening night gift.

And then you said, "Jakey, these are really beautiful.

Do you wanna give a recital or a concert together sometime?"

I thought, "Yeah, I could make myself available for that.

It'd be okay."

Nobody's gonna beat this story.

I met Flicka on stage of the Metropolitan Opera in "Le Nozze di Figaro."

It was my debut at the Met.

And literally, I started singing act two and she came on and I went, it's her.

And so I didn't really meet her until after act two, you know, coming off stage.

And of course she was absolutely brilliant.

I'm so, I feel kind of delighted that I got to see her do some of this repertoire.

Cherubino came about because while I was at the Met, I think I'd been there six or eight months, there was word going around that a man named Rolf Liebermann was doing a new production of "The Marriage of Figaro" and it was going to premiere in Versailles.

That was the most unbelievable experience.

I understudied her in "The Marriage of Figaro" at the Met early on, and I would watch her in rehearsals as if I were watching a masterclass.

She had the sass and the swagger, but also the scared little boy who was so nervous about singing "Voi che sapete" for that Countess.

One day she came up to me and she said, "Susie, I have to tell you I'm gonna miss a performance that's about three weeks from now."

She said, "I haven't even told the Met yet, but I'm telling you so that you can call your parents and have them fly up and see you in that performance because it's gonna be amazing."

Who does that?

It makes me teary right now just telling you that story.

So I have some ideas for you, ready to have some fun?

Yes.

And just be super, super silly.

Make up anything you wanna do, go behind Kevin, peek around the corner.

You can even do this.

Anything you wanna do.

Okay.

As you sing the first line.

And you're off!

Okay.

I'm not a teacher, I'm not a voice teacher.

I've done a bit of coaching at the conservatory.

What I like to do is sit in with a coaching and offer ideas.

And I love doing it, I do love doing it, but my assessment is that I'm not really that great at it.

[Flicka] Brava.

See, isn't it fun?

It's so fun.

And that's what you're going to do.

Okay, now, Leah, I'm gonna try and do it, which is gonna be fun for me.

Maybe not so much fun for you, but if you don't mind being Susanna, can we try it again?

Okay, of course.

All right, okay.

Oh, get that chair over there please.

Okay.

There's another amazing thing about Flicka and it's her generosity of spirit.

Just sharing what it was to have her career and be a mother, you know, when my children are younger and it helped me kind of figure out what my priorities were, how to, how to kind of fashion the timing so that I could support them and still, you know, make time for them and still manage to hit the marks that I needed to hit to kind of be on the trajectory I wanted to be on.

When I found out I was pregnant, I thought I had an ulcer because I had given up, I had been told I probably wouldn't have children.

And that was my Jenny.

I was beside myself.

It just, it was like, it was just like heaven.

I took her with me everywhere and one of the magic times was recording the "Chants d'Auvergne" in the Auvergne because it's in a language called "Languedoc" which very few people still speak.

We found this couple, a farming couple, and I would go and practice the language with them because it's sort of a combination of Portuguese and French and Italian.

It's all a little bit mushed in.

That's pretty much the light that I think shines on my career.

I'm so grateful to my first husband Peter for all that he gave me.

Top of the list are our beautiful, wonderful girls, Jen and Lisa, whom we both adore more than life.

We had many happy years together and I count them among my greatest blessings.

I remember thinking it would be nice if my mom was like a housewife or went to an office and came home, but there were always adventures that other kids didn't get to have, both in New York and getting to go abroad and exploring these different cities.

And it was very cool in a lot of ways.

Remember when I dressed up as a scarecrow to meet the bus at the end of the driveway?

And you, you both were just horrified.

Well, that would be another example of how you were not like other mothers.

Yes, exactly.

It's extremely challenging.

It's the hardest balancing act there is to do in our careers, because we can't stay at home and be classical singers.

I occasionally broached the subject with them of what it was like for them.

They didn't have their own home and their own swings and their own backyard, but when they started school, we moved back to Long Island and everything was a little bit more normal.

And then it was that agony of separation.

There's not a mother who leaves the house for three weeks that doesn't experience guilt.

No way.

I loved every minute of my career, but I am very aware of the cost to the girls.

The flip side of that also is that we got to travel the world and we got to go to amazing places with you.

Things like going to the White House was pretty exciting and we always loved meeting other famous people.

The fact that my mom was able to do that on such a huge level, and despite the fact that she couldn't always be around for everything, you know, I think we felt very special when she was around.

And it was always an adventure.

You want to try?

Sure!

You found a way to be present for us and to be present for everyone in your professional career.

And there were a lot of people in the day to day.

Yeah.

I just admire that.

I've read things about people saying that like, you're so normal and you treat your fellow, you know, singers same as your hairdresser or the, the makeup artist or whatever it is.

And that's very much true.

And I think that even more so normalized what was going on around us, was that it wasn't that we were shuttled through fancy hotels and like, we lived a pretty normal life and you're just not a diva.

That's not, yeah, that's not you.

My mom was one in a million, I think her first job was working for the CIA.

My father was killed in the war just before I was born.

And it didn't make a big difference in my life 'cause I had never known him, so I didn't miss him.

I had a lot of wonderful uncles too who took on that role.

And so my life was my brother and my mother and my granny, and that was fine with me.

My mom had a serious drinking problem.

She had been squashed as a young woman by her father who was a roaring alcoholic.

My mom's alcoholism affected my brother and I very deeply.

I mean, I remember finding her on the floor when we lived in Georgetown, so I must have been in like fifth grade, and I thought she was gone.

But it wasn't calculated with her.

It was a, a head full of trauma and hurt.

I was very close to her in the end.

It was pretty easy to appreciate all that she had done for my brother and me and all she'd been through in her life.

I think that came with having my own children and imagining what it was like to raise two kids by yourself and all the ins and outs and the complexities of that.

So we were, we were in a good place when she died.

If I had a magical wand and could go back to parts of my life, I wouldn't change them.

Even the costs to the girls.

Having to deal with trauma in your life is not a bad thing.

It's, it's gonna happen at some point in your life.

So learning to deal with it is a necessary skill.

And because things happened to them, they are who they are today, and I admire them enormously for who they are today.

The only reason I ever started writing poetry was because I wanted to honor my daughter Lisa with some songs since Jenny Rebecca, which is a Carol Hall song, that's what my daughter's name is.

So I wanted to do something for Lisa, and so I asked Jake to write some songs.

The one that is my favorite that I over sing to any degree is a true story of, it was a really hot summer day, and she crawled out a window and got onto the roof and she got stuck there.

It was hot and sticky and the, the roof was slate, so it was slippery.

It was really dangerous.

Sorry.

Please, look what it gave me.

A song and a story.

I had a whole song, a song cycle written about it.

♪ And the firemen got us down, oh the firemen got us down ♪ I love firemen too.

Oh God.

We did together an opera called "Dead Man Walking" written by Jake Heggie.

And it was life changing for everyone involved.

An opera that's like "Dead Man Walking" that starts with a murder and ends with an execution.

"Whoopee, let's go to the opera!"

you know, "What fun!"

It was very controversial and there were people that walked out.

It was controversial, first of all, that it was a new opera being written by an unknown composer.

And it wasn't a political opera.

No, it's a story about these people where the death penalty is, raises the stakes to life or death.

In the first scene in "Dead Man Walking" this fragile, shy, desperate woman is asked to come and sit in front of the parole board with a microphone in front of her and talk to them.

Nobody was better than that, at that than Flicka.

That's when the whole thing changes.

We've seen him, we've met Sister Helen.

We, he's remorseless, you know, he's trying to manipulate things and then all of a sudden you walk on and it's like, oh, he has a mother.

It's more complicated than that.

My life changed after "Dead Man Walking."

I sort of found my purpose, you know, in, in many ways in, in becoming for myself, this woman who has had much more go wrong in her life than I had ever even conceived of.

It is the most special role I think of my life, really.

It's, it's just like very much the inspiration about the choir we're putting together is that we need to know people whose lives have gone this way.

A wonderful colleague, Jonathan Palant, asked me to be part of a beautiful piece called "Street Requiem" and he was performing it with the Street Choir.

The Dallas Street Choir is about adding something joyful to people's lives who live on the street.

Someplace where people are coming for food and shelter and get with it, something fun to do.

The biggest thing that poverty takes from people is creativity.

The majority of creativity they're using is the creativity to stay alive, just to cope.

What I need from all of you is to tell me the problems.

Everything in Oakland, when you're trying to reach the underserved, the first thing is where you're gonna locate it because the geographic spaces are so huge.

Right, yeah.

I think it's better to aim at the shelters.

I agree.

We have to be extra stable because they are unstable.

Exactly.

Yeah, if you would get, submit ideas for a name and mission statement, then we could, we could go from there.

Well, there's a beginning.

Are y'all in?

Yeah.

You know, and I, I want to say, I think with, with your name attached to this, finding superstars to come be supportive is gonna be a lot easier.

I'll use it.

And if I could add, the star power plus people know your commitment to social justice and your commitment to doing good for your community, and I think that's really exciting.

You're bringing it into a space that is trying to do make the world better.

Thank you guys.

This meeting got my heart beating faster.

You know what I really look forward to more than anything is being with people who are going through this in their life.

I think, I think it's really important.

They're people and they're not very far from, they're far from our life experiences, but they're not far from our characters and it's just unfair the amount of humiliation that they must suffer and the amount of, the worry.

She's the saint among us.

And I kind of, you know, have modeled my negotiations and my maneuvering through this minefield of a profession with that in mind.

Because she's, she brings fresh air into the room.

What would Flicka do?

She's been like a guide and life model and mentor for me in so many ways, as well as one of my best friends, as well as one of my closest collaborators, as well as someone, you know, what would Flicka do?

How would Flicka handle this situation, you know?

When I'm feeling angry or upset about something, I will think that, how would Flicka handle this?

Because she would immediately go to compassion for the other person or for the situation.

It's just all so direct and, and straightforward.

And she's love, you know, she's like the walking embodiment of love and light.

She's a devout Catholic, but she's spicy, she's saucy and she's not afraid to tell a sassy joke or make a funny comment that takes you off guard a little bit.

But then when she gets down to work, it's serious.

It's seriously heartfelt, she's so genuine on and off the stage, she sets the bar very high.

Hello everyone.

So this week is a little different.

We have a film crew with us.

We're just gonna continue on as normal, so we're going to sing together.

I like being around her.

I feel like I've been knowing her all my life.

♪ Totally free ♪ ♪ 'Cause I wanna be free ♪ ♪ Completely free ♪ ♪ I wanna be free ♪ ♪ Totally free ♪ To have this People's Choir of Oakland, up and running is such a joy, I can't tell you.

And how a lot of our guests cope with what their lives are, I cannot fathom, I just cannot fathom.

Flicka and I try to stay in touch, you know, as much as we can by emails or texts or the occasional phone call.

You know, I love her so much and unfortunately we don't get to see each other.

It could be months, weeks, even a year.

But you know, she's, she's always right back here in the back of my mind.

But lately I've been having this weird dream and Flicka keeps appearing as as my mother.

Now I know she's too young to be my mother and I'm far too old to be her daughter but she just keeps showing up in really an unexpected way.

She's just kind of not herself.

In my career, I loved playing bad guys and I didn't get a chance to play too many of them.

I think the fun of it was I could be everything I was brought up not to be by the nuns.

I could be mean and nasty and vengeful and spiteful and rude and sexy and really evil.

I could absolutely explore the parameters of evil.

And the pieces I did where I was bad were so beautifully written that I could go there with all my heart.

"Dangerous Liaison" was a very serious role for her.

I mean, we are all familiar pretty much with the film, I would say, and the play.

So she - it wasn't the typical part that she was known for, you know, playing boys, et cetera.

You hear four notes out of Renée in rehearsal or anything and you know you are in the presence of a superstar.

[Flicka] Such a plumby role, Madame de Merteuil.

It was also hard.

It was a long role, it was a lot of singing and a big final scene that was quite dramatic.

So it was just great for me to be able to watch her in action and see how, oh, this is how a professional works.

She was a study in unacceptability.

She was a study in an historic phase of how people lived.

She was so decorated by her time that you couldn't see in the black heartedness that was inside her, the will to destroy and destroy herself.

And last words are, "I'm hungry."

I can remember thinking to myself, "What'll I do tonight?"

Shall I do mean nasty, angry, sad, blasé would be sort of, you know, I've wrecked everything, "I'm hungry," or "I'm hungry!"

You know, whatever it was.

I used to wait for that moment, it was so exciting.

You know, it's just so much fun.

I'm ready for my close up, Mr.

Demille.

So, Mr.

Staufenbiel.

I'd like to have your address and phone number because we have some things to discuss.

See how I can not move my mouth?

Can you see that?

I think I have a new career.