Renée Fleming (soprano)
Greatest Moments at the Met
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra & Chorus/various conductors
rec. live 1994-2015, Metropolitan Opera House, New York City
DECCA 485 3569 [2 CDs: 144]
Although she recently sang a new role in the world premiere of Kevin Puts’ opera The Hours , at 63 years old, “America’s favourite soprano” Renée Fleming has now retired from the operas featured here.
As Decca’s blurb for this new release puts it: “Since her 1991 debut when she stepped in for Felicity Lott, Renée has performed on the MET stage over 250 times and describes the MET as ‘my musical home, the theater where I feel welcome amongst friends – backstage, onstage, and in the audience.’”
These nineteen roles thus chronologically chart her appearances at the Metropolitan Opera over a quarter of a century, forming both a tribute to that extraordinarily successful collaboration and providing a comprehensive retrospective of a carefully managed career. Nearly two-and-a-half hours of music are on offer, a journey through two hundred and thirty years from baroque opera, Handel’s Rodelinda (1725), through the Classical and Romantic genres, to “modern” opera noir, Britten’s Peter Grimes (1945) and the violent American “folk opera” Susannah (1955) – quite a span.
Over the years, Fleming has recorded many conventional opera recitals but also some jazz and crossover albums; the two compilation CDs here, although live, are in excellent sound and concentrate on showcasing her acumen as a full lyric soprano; there is no Donizetti, but bel canto is represented by Bellini – albeit for only a brief but beautiful four minutes from the sole time the Met has staged Il pirata – and the excerpt from Rossini’s Armida. It would seem that Fleming had considerable input into the anthology, selecting those roles she most enjoyed, including that with which she is perhaps most associated, Rusalka; the famous “Song to the Moon” aria won her the Met’s National Council Auditions in 1988, took her all over the world and prompted the Met to mount no fewer than four separate runs of the opera for her – though I must confess that, that ethereal lunar aria apart, the opera as a whole has never done much for me.
Fleming’s voice is often reminiscent of that of Kiri Te Kanawa, with whom, in terms of timbre, temperament and repertoire, she has much in common. Neither would consider herself a bel canto specialist and both excelled in Mozart and Strauss. No singer is perfect; it is possible to find fault with some very slightly laboured top notes and a tendency towards excessively swoopy portamenti and a breathy expressivity, but for the most part the accomplishment demonstrated here is captivating; the listener may sit back and luxuriate in the creamy, unforced sound of a singer whose repertoire has encompassed an impressively wide range of styles, from bel canto, to coloratura, to lyric, to the spinto Fach, singing in six languages. Many of the parts here may be accounted “signature roles” – although the Countess in Strauss’ Capriccio has been left out because, as the notes explain by quoting the singer, the obvious choice of the concluding scene was too long – and although James Levine is the most frequently encountered conductor here, in those notes his presence is discreetly passed over.
The first CD begins with Fleming’s Met debut in Le nozze di Figaro (although, as the notes again explain, no recording of that specific night was made, so excerpts from a later performance in 1998 are used). I do not propose to weary the reader with a blow-by-blow analysis of every track here, especially as Fleming’s many virtues and few faults are consistent throughout. She has an endearing – or possibly irksome – little habit of injecting a glottal catch into phrases to convey deep emotion and palpable involvement in the character she is singing and can indulge in a little too much Sutherland-esque “swooning”, but by and large the amplitude and warmth of her tone, sustained by that crucial feature of true legato and “singing through” phrases, carry all before and envelop the listener in a velvety blanket of sound. Although live performances often convey more drama than studio accounts, the very consistency of Fleming’s voice and affect throughout means that I cannot say that I hear much advantage to these being live recordings as opposed to studio versions – but I mean that as a compliment to her artistry and commitment regardless of venue; likewise, the skill of the engineers – to whom Fleming pays tribute in the notes – has resulted in what sounds an exceptionally homogeneous-sounding recital over an extended period. She has occasionally in the past been accused of “microphone crooning”, but I suspect one clear advantage of performing in that barn of a venue which is the Met, is that it is no longer possible to have recourse to such a vocal style and remain audible, so her soft, low notes here are still properly supported. Sometimes vociferous applause has been left in, which is fine, but otherwise there is no extraneous noise, one or two faint coughs notwithstanding.
The longevity of her voice is of course attributable to good technique; evidence of proper lower-register development emerges from time to time; she has a trill, and her voice is remarkably even across its range, without grinding gear changes. She makes a very moving, endearing, immensely pitiable Desdemona – a role she emphasises as being a best fit to her voice – but those qualities are likewise evinced in a whole slew of parts; my own favourites here are her Thaïs – which she also very successfully recorded – Arabella, the Marschallin (Der Rosenkavalier) – which I heard and hugely enjoyed at Covent Garden – a desperate but dignified Tatyana and Marietta (Die tote Stadt). The amplitude and security of her voice are illustrated by the way she fills out Strauss’ long, soaring lines in the Arabella aria, and having remarked above that her top notes could occasionally be thin, I must acknowledge that her crescendo top B in the Louise aria is a stunner, meriting the storm of applause it provokes, and she caps the seductive Thaïs aria with a top D which might not be easy on the ear but is certainly there.
With one or two reservations inevitably arising from personal taste, I find virtually everything here to be a delight; perhaps her Manon is too pouty and winsome and my own experience of hearing her sing Violetta at Covent Garden was that she did a fine job but that it was not a role especially suited to her gifts. Having said that, her singing here of the duet with Hvorostovsky from La traviata is very touching and the other concluding Eugene Onegin is both moving and mesmerising at Gergiev’s slow speeds. Hvorostovsky was still in finest voice for this 2007 broadcast and that excerpt is the longest here, a distinction justified by its intensity. Her co-singers are indeed mostly a distinguished bunch even if I am not especially enamoured of Massimo Giordano’s un-Gallic des Grieux – but no matter.
Given the comprehensiveness of this survey and the fact that these are all live recordings rather than re-issues from previously released studio albums and thus new (apart from the Eugene Onegin, which is on DVD) no admirer of Renée Fleming need hesitate to acquire it.
Ralph Moore
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Contents
CD 1
1-4:
Mozart: LE NOZZE DI FIGARO K.492
Act III: “E Susanna non vien …
Act III: … Dove sono i bei momenti”
Act III: “Cosa mi narri!”
Act III: “Sull’aria… che soave zeffiretto”
RENÉE FLEMING Countess Almaviva · CECILIA BARTOLI (3–4) Susanna
James Levine, cond.
Verdi: OTELLO
5-7:
Act IV: “Era più calmo?”
Act IV: “Piangea cantando” (Willow Song)
Act IV: “Ave Maria, piena di grazia”
RENÉE FLEMING Desdemona · WENDY WHITE (5) Emilia
Semyon Bychkov, cond.
Strauss: ARABELLA Op.79
8. Act III: “Das war sehr gut, Mandryka”
RENÉE FLEMING Arabella
Christoph Eschenbach, cond.
Britten: PETER GRIMES Op.33
9. Act III: “Embroidery in childhood was a luxury of idleness”
RENÉE FLEMING Ellen Orford · ALAN OPIE Captain Balstrode
James Conlon, cond.
Charpentier: LOUISE
10. Act III: “Depuis le jour”
RENÉE FLEMING Louise
James Levine, cond.
Gounod: FAUST
11. Act IV: “Alerte! Alerte! ou vous êtes perdus!”
RENÉE FLEMING Marguerite · SAMUEL RAMEY Méphistophélès · RICHARD LEECH Faust
Julius Rudel, cond.
Dvořák: RUSALKA Op.114
12. Act I: “Mĕsíčku na nebi hlubokém” (Song To The Moon
RENÉE FLEMING Rusalka
Jiří Bělohlávek
Massenet: MANON
13-15:
Act III: “Obéissons quand leur voix appelle”
Act III: “Toi! Vous!”
Act III: “N’est-ce plus ma main que cette main presse”
RENÉE FLEMING Manon · MASSIMO GIORDANO (14–15) des Grieux
Marco Armiliato (13)/Jesús López Cobos, conds.
CD 2
Floyd: SUSANNAH
1-2:
Act I: “Ain’t it a pretty night!”
Act II: “That’s mighty pretty singin’, Susannah”
RENÉE FLEMING Susannah · SAMUEL RAMEY (2) Rev. Olin Blitch
James Conlon, cond.
Strauss: DER ROSENKAVALIER Op.59
3. Act III: “Marie Theres’!” 5.33
RENÉE FLEMING The Marschallin · SUSAN GRAHAM Octavian · HEIDI GRANT MURPHY Sophie
James Levine, cond.
Mozart: DON GIOVANNI K.527
4-5:
Act II: “Crudele? Ah no, mio bene! …
Act II: … Non mi dir, bell’idol mio”
RENÉE FLEMING Donna Anna
James Levine, cond.
Bellini: IL PIRATA
6. Act II: “Col sorriso d’innocenza”
RENÉE FLEMING Imogene
Bruno Campanella, cond.
Verdi: LA TRAVIATA
7-8:
Act II: “Ah! Dite alla giovine”
Act II: “Imponete – non amarlo ditegli”
RENÉE FLEMING Violetta · DMITRI HVOROSTOVSKY Germont
Valery Gergiev, cond.
Handel: RODELINDA HWV 19
9. Act III: “Mio caro bene”
RENÉE FLEMING Rodelinda
Patrick Summers, cond.
Tchaikovsky: EUGENE ONEGIN
10-11:
Act III: “O! Kak mnye tyazhelo!”
Act III: “Onegin! Ya togda molozhe”
RENÉE FLEMING Tatiana · DMITRI HVOROSTOVSKY Onegin
Valery Gergiev, cond.
Massenet: THAÏS
12-13:
Act II: “Ah je suis seule …
Act II: … Dis-moi que je suis belle”
RENÉE FLEMING Thaïs
Jesús López Cobos, cond.
Rossini: ARMIDA
14-15:
Act III: “Dove son io? … Fuggi!”
Act III: “È ver… gode quest’anima”
RENÉE FLEMING Armida
Riccardo Frizza, cond.
Lehár: THE MERRY WIDOW
16. Act II: “Hello, here’s a soldier bold”
RENÉE FLEMING Hanna Glawari · NATHAN GUNN Count Danilovitch
Sir Andrew Davis, cond.
Korngold: DIE TOTE STADT Op.12
17. Act I: “Glück, das mir verblieb” (Marietta’s Lied)
RENÉE FLEMING Marietta
James Levine, cond.
Other performers
with Heidi Grant Murphy (soprano)
Cecilia Bartoli (mezzo-soprano)
Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano)
Wendy White (mezzo-soprano)
Massimo Giordano (tenor)
Richard Leech (tenor)
Nathan Gunn (baritone)
Dmitri Hvorostovsky (baritone)
Alan Opie (baritone)
Samuel Ramey (bass)
