Creativity Quote by Lesley Garrett

There is something delightfully unglamorous about a soprano admitting, mid-conversation, that she’s “engaging” her diaphragm. It’s the sound of craft breaking through the polite fiction that great voices are just “natural.” Lesley Garrett’s line pulls the curtain back on the body as instrument: breath support isn’t a rehearsal-only trick, it’s an always-on discipline. The intent is practical - she’s explaining technique - but the subtext is bigger. She’s reminding you that performance isn’t confined to the stage; it’s a way of inhabiting your own physiology in real time.

It also works as a tiny act of demystification. Classical singing carries a lot of inherited prestige, the kind that can make technique feel like priestly knowledge. Garrett’s phrasing is plainspoken, almost chatty, which makes the technicality land harder. “Right now” is the kicker: she’s collapsing the distance between expert and audience, between art and ordinary speech. You don’t need an aria to require support; you need it to be heard, to be steady, to take up space without strain.

Culturally, it fits Garrett’s public persona as a crossover communicator - someone who translates opera’s intimidating machinery into human-scale terms. The line quietly argues that voice is not just expression but management: of breath, nerves, attention. Even in conversation, she’s practicing control, which is another way of saying she’s refusing to let her voice be accidental.