EAR PLUGS, LOUISE!!!

So we've all seen this, right?



Um-hmm. So what do I think?

You wanna know?

You REALLY wanna know?

At least she sounds better than Charlotte Church, but you can tell she’s been trained to do this like a trick – she can sing that one aria (and maybe a couple of others) because she’s listened to recordings and is imitating them. How can you tell? She sang two notes and I said, “Renée Fleming.” SHE’S JUST IMITATING RENÉE FLEMING’S RECORDINGS!!! Right down to some of the little things about Renée that some critics don’t like. Even Charlotte Church had better knowledge of the mechanics of how to sing (even though she couldn’t do it very well). And our 10-yr-old divette (can’t be bothered to remember her name) is gonna tear up her vocal cords before she’s twenty if she keeps singing things like “O mio babbino caro.” Heck, HANS BUCHHIERL knew more about singing than this girl does (and he did it far better, too). So I am unimpressed. Lil’ Miss Divette will have her fifteen minutes and when she turns 13 they’ll tart her up like they did with Charlotte Church after someone finally told her, “Honey, you ain’t no feckin’ Callas!” And we’ll all forget about her by the time she’s twenty, unless she implodes like Lindsay Lohan. I hope Lil’ Miss Divette’s stage mother is happy. Grump. I’m gonna go put on a Renée CD!

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P.S. Oh, Jackie darling, Renée Fleming called? She'd like her hair back.




Hans Buchhierl, best boy soprano ever. He could sing rings around Lil' Miss Divette. Freaking...RINGS!!!

Hopeless

The Arcade Fire -- the real deal. Accept no substitutes.

Oh my FSM. This classical music blogger sums it up perfectly. A marvelous analysis of everything that is wrong with Renée Fleming’s new CD, Dark Hope.

The same mistakes are repeated all over the record – Band of Horses’ sparse ballad “No One’s Gonna Love You” is transformed into a half-hearted syrupy mess. Willy Mason’s naïve “Oxygen” becomes overworked with the addition of synthesized strings.

What do you think would happen if you tried to put these strings on one of Renée’s classical albums? How is it ok here? Is there a good reason to accept lower standards because it’s a rock record?

No, there is no good reason, and that’s what forms the glaring fault at the heart of this project. Compliments for Renée’s voice, but what the hell were they thinking with these arrangements? They’re timid and totally without character. As with any other cover of a song, the artist has to have a point in doing it in the first place – what are you trying to say that wasn’t said in the original? Somebody grabbed some indie tunes for Renée to sing and did nothing to make her versions count. Coming on the heels of what I consider one of Renée Fleming’s finest CDs (Verismo), Dark Hope is just embarrassing. The bright hope is that they won’t try this again.

“A hope in the dark: Renée Fleming’s rock album” (Proper Discord)

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Renée Fleming's Dark Hope

I finally found a chance to listen to Renée Fleming's new CD, Dark Hope. My opinion is divided. Renée's voice is perfect on this disc, both bluesy and beautiful in all the right ways and far surpassing her run at jazz and soft pop on her CD Haunted Heart, which wasn't bad at all. But she has found a better and more substantial voice for pop/rock music here. The Renée Fleming fan in me is very, very happy.

However, the arrangements of the songs on Dark Hope are a little too MOR for my taste -- the rock fan in me wants more energy and aggression. My keystone song on the CD is "Intervention," originally done by The Arcade Fire on their CD, Neon Bible. This is an angry song with huge operatic themes and emotions (see the video, which is well-accompanied by clips from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin). Ironically, in the hands of the greatest active operatic soprano, this arrangement of "Intervention" fails to reach those emotional heights.

Renée Fleming, with that perfect voice, would be better served with more aggressive arrangements of all of these songs -- her delivery of the Letter Scene in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin has more emotional heft to it. So, my feelings about this CD are mixed. A missed opportunity in many ways. Renée delivered, but perhaps the fears of the producers kept the balance of the songs' imprint a bit too tame. Damn, this CD had the potential to be great.



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Renee Fleming rocks out on 'Dark Hope'

As the big day approaches, here's a great article about the genesis of Renée Fleming's new CD, Dark Hope, featuring songs by The Arcade Fire, Peter Gabriel, and others. What's it like to tone down the sheer vocal power of an operatic soprano?

Kahne too wasn't sure he could pull it off. When Fleming first arrived in the studio to sing with his demo tracks, he was overwhelmed. "It was like a Ferrari going through a school zone," he said. "You sense the power, and once it gets out of the school zone, it can zoom away."

And can an old lady pull off this music written by young people?

The album's most discordant selection may be Mason's "Oxygen," a political folk-rock anthem for kids whose parents told them about Bob Dylan over dinner. A one-two beat propels such lyrics as "Just need to get past all the lies and hypocrisy, makeup and hair to the truth behind every face." The song's naked earnestness makes sense when you learn Mason wrote "Oxygen" when he was 17 in high school.

Can a 51-year-old get away with singing a teenager's protest song about Ritalin, TV and war?

"This is not new to me," Fleming said. "I'm mostly singing roles of 16- to 23-year-olds in opera. So I'm used to imagining a young person's point of view. Frankly, as we age, we don't change our thinking about wishing things were different. We're just more resigned to it. So it's fun to reenact what it means to be super-charged-up about something."

You're only as old as you feel, right? The CD is released in the U.S. tomorrow. I can't wait! Although I'll have to because Amazon hasn't shipped the dang thing yet. Hmpf!

"Renee Fleming rocks out on 'Dark Hope'" (Los Angeles Times)

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Renée Fleming is Everywhere!

A double-barreled Renée Fleming update, with two articles that focus on her upcoming CD Dark Hope. The first article, from The Times Online, focuses on the diva herself and her life, loves, and fans -- one of whom is the President.

Turning 50 last year was like crossing some sort of invisible line for the American soprano Renée Fleming. The opera superstar, who is known as “the people’s diva” and sang at President Obama’s inauguration — he is a huge fan — says: “It was an amazing shift, somehow, and I didn’t expect that to happen. It’s such a relief. Now I feel very young for my age! I think it’s much better to be a young old person than to be an old young person.”

The second article, from The New York Times, goes into detail about the new CD and discusses the role of crossover projects in the classical music world. About recording the CD itself:

As she has explained in interviews, the project was not her idea. Metallica’s managers, Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch, had long wanted to pair a classically trained singer with rock songwriters. After listening to some of the songs, she was intrigued enough to speak with the producer David Kahne. “David is so thoughtful and articulate that I become even more fascinated by the prospect of exploring a completely different use of my voice,” she writes in her liner notes.

They settled on 11 songs, chosen for their suitability for her voice, the meaning of the lyrics and overall qualities of mystery and elusiveness that reminded her of classical works she loves — songs like “Intervention” by Arcade Fire, “With Twilight as My Guide” by the Mars Volta, and a few older pieces, like Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” and, in a bold move, the Jefferson Airplane ballad “Today.”

Adapting her voice to rock took hard work. She and Mr. Kahne realized that it was best for her to sing in the range of her speaking voice, which is sometimes two octaves lower. Any idea that she would discard technique and just jam was quashed by Mr. Kahne, who, Ms. Fleming writes, enforced “stringent stylistic rules,” including a softening of diction and rhythm, less overt drama and no dropping of the ends of the phrases.

Of course, every great diva has her detractors.

Ms. Fleming, for all her success, has drawn tough criticism from a segment of opera buffs who find her singing mannered and fussy. “Dark Hope” will surely rile them further.

La Cieca, we're looking at you.

Needless to say, I can't wait to hear Renée's new CD.

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"Bevo al Tuo Fresco Sorriso," from Puccini's La Rondine

This is quite simply one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard in my life, featuring the incomparable Renée Fleming and the marvelous (and terribly, terribly cute) Jonas Kaufmann. Crank it up, people!

"Bevo al Tuo Fresco Sorriso," from Puccini's La Rondine.

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P.S. This is the concluding track on Renée Fleming's latest CD, Verismo. It's all about love!

Gelb from the Met

So I need an excuse to post a picture of Renée Fleming?

Catnip for us opera fans, Vanity Fair's profile of the Metropolitan Opera with general manager Peter Gelb at the helm is fascinating, fun, and a bit worrisome, financially speaking. I mean, c'mon; you young'uns who love great big emotional drama like football and The Lord of the Rings oughta eat this opera stuff up like crazy!

Inside the opera house, 13 cameras captured every detail in high definition; the feeds were relayed to us in the truck. We could see the Ukrainian soprano Maria Guleghina backstage, getting ready to play the sadistic Chinese princess—the title role. Up front, the ushers handed out programs and guided people to their seats. “Guys,” the video director said, speaking through a headset to his cameramen, “I need audience shots. Young people. Is there anyone under 40? Find young people!”

Generally I like what Gelb has done while at the Met, and I say that as someone who admires Joe Volpe for his very different helmsmanship of the company during his tenure. (So things went south after 9/11 -- how is that Joe Volpe's fault?) I especially like Gelb's unified marketing message, using a single theme to bring together a season's programs with one, recognizable image. (Since I don't live in NYC, I don't know how that's playing out right now, but the concept and previous execution are good, FWIW.) Perhaps Gelb has been too quick to abandon old, staple productions in favor of disasters like Luc Bondy's Tosca production earlier this season (though innovation is good in opera, maybe the Met isn't the house to take those chances), but I remain very interested by the future plans Gelb has in store. If nothing else, I'll be listening on Sirius Radio tomorrow night to the premiere of Rossini's Armida, and hoping it all goes well, especially for my darling Renée!

Fascinating article. Slip a Renée Fleming CD onto the stereo and enjoy!

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Renée Fleming: Diva goes to the dark side

Here's an outstanding interview with Renée Fleming, from The Guardian, about Renée's unusual new CD called Dark Hope, due out in June. Renée is covering several indie rock songs, including tracks originally done by The Arcade Fire, Death Cab for Cutie, and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." But the album is not what you might think -- this could be one of the most interesting releases of the year, and not just for us classical fans.

First off, I love this quote:

The artifice of operatic expression amuses and sometimes embarrasses her. "It's a kind of controlled screaming. Basically we holler – in an extremely cultivated way, of course!"

Also this comment, sure to be argued over (the writer’s comment, not necessarily Renée):

…comparing Fleming's covers with the originals, I can't help feeling that she has a musical finesse and an emotional authority to which those whiny juveniles could hardly aspire. Welsh singer Duffy gargles her scales in "Stepping Stone" while Fleming skips up the ladder with exhilarating exactitude. Songs about being crossed in love sound petulant and self-pitying when delivered by teenagers; the same words are given gravity by Fleming, who without resorting to operatic exaggeration can suggest adult disillusionment and heartbreak. "Well," she said, "what I have to contribute is life-experience, not all of it good!" She meant her divorce, and the equally painful realisation that her career makes any other permanent relationship unlikely: few men are willing to dwindle into a consort, smiling from the sidelines as the diva is mobbed by worshippers.

I think "whiny juveniles" is a bit much; thank goodness that's not Renée's attitude.

Renée Fleming hasn't abandoned opera by any means -- she's getting ready to do Rossini's Armida in May at the Met:

Characteristically, Fleming views Armida as a victim, demonised by male fears. "Sure, she manipulates men. I love it when she simpers, 'OK, now I'm just gonna go die', all in order to get her way. But it's kind of tragic: feminine wiles are all she has. She's traded back and forth, and she has to rely on the tricks that we still go on using today. She's almost a caricature of what a woman is – or what society demands that a woman should be."

I can't wait for the CD or the Rossini! And you know where I'll be come October 9!

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Eugene Onegin

Is there any opera more devastating than Eugene Onegin? Any opera climax that leaves so much blood on the stage without a single visible wound? Even Don Giovanni passes into the mythological before its monumental ending, keeping us at one remove from empathy with the doomed title character. In Eugene Onegin, we end with two people's lives torn asunder by their mistaken ideas about each other -- the monumental emotions of the heart. You reach out your hands and hold on, and fall into the emotional abyss with Eugene and Tatiana. Wow.

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P.S. Gratuitous Dmitri Hvorostovsky picture. He's called "The Siberian Tiger" since he's from (and currently lives in) Siberia. WANT.



Oh, this is what I watched tonight. Fabulous on so many levels!

Happy Birthday, Renée!

Because, on February 14, 1959, the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast was Mozart's Don Giovanni, conducted by Karl Böhm.

Nice performance, BTW.

Because Don Giovanni is possibly the most devastating opera ever written. Don Juan ripped apart and given his comeuppance, even though we still, somehow, want him to kick the crap out of that stony ghost and keep on going.

Because, on that Saturday in 1959 -- February 14, for those keeping score -- a little girl was born in the small town of Indiana, Pennsylvania.

And she was named Renée Fleming.

Because I just watched this tonight:



And it has been a long time since anything has wiped me out the way this did tonight.

When Renée sings "Non mi dir," I swear the heavens rip apart, and angels swarm around Donna Anna. While I turn into a puddle on the floor.

Anyhoo. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Renée Fleming. We have a date at the Folly Theatre in Kansas City in October. I will be there!

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Renée Fleming

Pretty much, one runs out of superlatives to use to describe the voice and artistry of Renée Fleming. Every time I hear her sing, I fall in love with her all over again. I was fortunate enough to see her in recital here in Kansas City back in 2004. It was the single most amazing concert I have ever attended. The rich caramel tone of Renée's voice wrapped around the audience and totally enraptured every one of us. She did four encores! I think that she felt something wonderful that night as well, because Renée recently set aside ten dates for recitals throughout North America. Then her management people contacted the Harriman-Jewell Fine Arts Series (which sponsored her 2004 recital) and told them they had first choice of a date. It's in October. I will be there!

Renée's new CD Verismo is stunning -- I have it on right now. Beautiful. And can that woman wear a gown or what?!?

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