A Place at the Top

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The New York Sun

It used to be there was no single prima donna, no great female opera singer who stood out from all the rest, simply because there were too many great singers. Barely a generation ago, a shortlist of the world’s finest classical female singers would have included names like Joan Sutherland, Leontyne Price, Beverly Sills, Birgit Nilsson, Eileen Farrell, Anna Moffo, Magda Olivero, Renata Scotto, Montserrat Caballe, Rita Gorr, Mirella Freni, Marilyn Horne, Christa Ludwig, Janet Baker, Leonie Rysanek, and Julia Varady – artists of undisputed vocal beauty and wisdom, even genius. These days Renee Fleming winds up carrying the burden pretty much by herself.


That is not to say there are no exciting singers. Some, such as Susan Graham and Cecilia Bartoli, are mezzos rather than pure sopranos. Others are stubborn independents whose brilliance seems to elude the wider public (Lorraine Hunt Lieberson may be the most important American soprano since Maria Callas). But Ms. Fleming occupies a place at the top of the musical world.


Ms. Fleming opens Carnegie Hall tomorrow, singing Richard Strauss’s “Four Last Songs” with Christoph Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra. But like any good leader of a fall campaign must, she’s already launched a few opening shots: a just-published recital disk, “Renee Fleming: Handel” (Decca) and a book, apparently self-penned, “The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer” (Viking, 256 pages, $24.95).


You won’t find backstabbing in this pages of the book. Ms. Fleming is not the kind of singer to charge across a stage in full thunder to denounce the opera house manager of that very theater, who’s been giving her a hard time (Callas); or the sort of diva who, protesting murky “atmospheric” lighting in a “Walkure” production, shows up for work one day wearing a miner’s helmet (Nilsson). Indeed, this is the only opera-diva book I can ever recall in which I failed to find a single instance of its subject settling scores with a colleague or critic over some old slight.


Instead, we get charming moments like one when, as Fleming hovers on the brink of international success, Leontyne Price issues a command: “Tell Renee I would like to meet with her.” Ms. Fleming proceeds downtown to Ms. Price’s Federal-era home, shakes the great one’s hand, and notes: “When I walked in the door, the first thing I saw were nineteen Grammys standing on a table in the entrance hall. I could only think, ‘If I work for the rest of my life I will never achieve anything like that.'”


Ms. Fleming describes her student days, and how she waited after operas or concerts for hours to say thanks to singers, and she tries to remember after her own appearances that there may be others camped outside waiting for a glimpse or a word from her. Some may call such disclosures “nice,” others “cloying,” but in fact “The Inner Voice” is a candid, friendly, and intelligent recounting of a lifetime’s unstinting love and hard work. It makes the gentleness and thoughtfulness in Ms. Fleming’s character, evident in her well-prepared, often superbly sung performances, ring truer than ever.


Ms. Fleming’s endearing manner, similar to Renata Tebaldi’s and Mirella Freni’s (and she’s inherited fans from both divas), brings a warmth and glory to her best singing, which is evident on some of this new Handel album (Decca). Conducted with great spirit and style by the British Harry Bickett (who will lead Ms. Fleming in the Met’s first-ever production of Handel’s “Rodelinda” opening on December 2), the wonted tenderness and melting tones this singer has made part of her vocal signature are evident in such favorite arias as “Laschia ch’io pianga,” “O Sleep Why Dost Thou Leave Me,” and “Ombra mai fu.”


Ms. Flemings early years as a jazz singer taught her the kind of versatility and improvisational fearlessness Handel counted on from his singers, but which most present-day conductors raise their noses and batons in horror over. This is evident in every note of her best opera recording, of Handel’s “Alcina” (Elektra/Asylum); unfortunately, there isn’t much evidence of that audacity on the new record.


Ms. Fleming can sometimes sail through a musical passage with great beauty and poise but not enough emotional presence. When she is fully engaged, however, she does not so much gently illuminate the action onstage as ignite it. Witnesses to (I almost wrote “survivors of”) her seduction of a nearly lost love – in church, after mass – in “Manon,” or those lucky enough to see her in “Il Pirata” at the Met before she fell ill, know what I’m talking about.


A prima donna of Ms. Fleming’s ilk usually reigns in a few signature roles everyone loves her in. Ms. Fleming instead goes for the unfamiliar, the difficult, the roles others shy from (“The sheer gall!” a friend yelled when he heard she would sing “Il Pirata,” a role forever associated with a concert tape of Callas singing it at Carnegie Hall). “The Inner Voice” and the Handel album, and speculation about what she might sing next, only increase the anticipation audiences are learning to live with.


The New York Sun

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