Renee Fleming is the Soprano to Hear Whether You like Opera or Not

Why is it that when you ask strangers you run into on the streets today to name at least one opera singer they know the most likely categorically correct (no crossover non-opera singers who just sing re-arranged opera arias in concert, you know, like Sarah Brightman or Charlotte Church or Katherine Jenkins or Il Divo, etc) would still be Maria Callas and/or Andrea Bocelli?

I have nothing against La Divina (Callas' nickname among her admirers). She was one of a kind phenomenal artist who transformed her art form in more ways than one. Her high off-stage profile (after all, she was the woman Aristotle Onassis ditched to get with Jackie Kennedy) combined with her own all-on-merit onstage status as the prima donna assoluta of the Italian opera to hoist her into a legend in her own time, the like of which would likely not be seen again. But... But... Callas has been dead for more than 30 years already. In the years since there are (and have been) many jaw-dropping, goose-bumps-inducing great opera singers burning up the stages all over the planet. If you haven't been paying attention to them before, let's start with a look at the American soprano Renée Fleming.

Who is Renée Fleming, you ask. Well, many of you have already glimpse her singing the famous 'You'll Never Walk Alone' song from Carousel at President Barack Obama's inauguration last January. Born on Valentine's Day in 1959 in Pennsylvania and grew up in Churchville, New York, Fleming is the winner of multiple classical music Grammy awards, singing competitions, and is in high demand at all the major opera houses and solo recitals. Her voice can be heard singing in at least 7 different languages (including Tolkien's Elvish on the soundtracks of the featured film 'Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King') in various CDs and DVDs (she has an exclusive contract with Decca). And when she isn't performing, she can even be seen hosting many opera HD broadcast to movie theaters from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, her de facto artistic home theater.

Considering her enormously successful career, you would never guess just how much rejections and failures she had to struggle through along the way even though she was brought up in a very musical family (the mother sang soprano roles at the local opera house and teaches voice and her father taught vocal music in a high school) and practically learned to sing before she could really talk. Fleming did everything right - or at least the way she ought to - and excelled in school, graduating from State University of New York - Potsdam before moving on to post-grad studies at Juilliard, taking a break from her second year there to accept the Fulbright Scholarship to study in Germany where she was taught by the likes of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Arleen Augér (legendary operatic sopranos in their own right). All of that while facing down unsuccessful auditions and polite (and not-so-polite) declinations from artist management agents.

Fleming's big break through on to the opera's in-demand list came in 1988 when she was engaged to sing the Countess Almaviva in a run of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at Houston Grand Opera in 1988. The role became her calling card (click here to glimpse why) and, over time she became known to many if not most opera fans as the premier interpreter of Mozart and Strauss, along with many other roles like Dvorak's Rusalka (the operatic equivalent of the Little Mermaid), Massenet's Manon and Thais, and Rossini's Armida. It might surprise you, then, that her first musical love was neither opera nor classical singing but... JAZZ! (and perhaps music composition. If you attended Gates Chili Junior High School in Rochester, NY after the late 70's you might have grown up singing one of her songs at school functions).

Her biggest asset, of course, is that glowing vocal liquid gold flowing (seemingly) effortlessly out of her throat to easily fill even barn-size opera houses like the 3995 seats Metropolitan Opera or the 2700 seats Opera Bastille without any need for amplification. Her professionalism and unpretentious personality endears her to her colleagues and her aptness at diplomacy makes her an ideal ambassador of classical music to the mass. Her memoir, The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer, is one of the most well written autobiography I have read (and I have rarely gone a week without wading to someone's memoir). It is a must read for any aspiring singer (opera or not) and music lover as she thoughtfully touches on many of today's most discussed performing arts issues like the decline in popularity of opera and classical music (and how that can be turned around), the marketing-driven promotion of singers, and even copyright and music piracy.

La Fleming, of course, is no Callas. But then again, La Callas was no Fleming either. If you had never given opera or classical vocal music a good try before and would like to have a go, Renee Fleming is as good a portal to this mesmerizing world of dramatic music that can relate a lifetime of stories in the course of an aria, dismissing your lonesomeness with the reassurance that someone had been through whatever tempestuous life storm you are weathering before and had recorded their trial in those gorgeously sung notes that connect deep within your soul even though you don't understand a single word of Italian or French or German or whatever language the thing is in. Her recordings are easily found at the local music store or online and she is even seen a few times a year at the cinema now, either singing or hosting one of those HD broadcast of opera from the Metropolitan Opera to movie theaters all over the globe. Youtube and other video hosting websites are abound with good clips from her various performances and recordings.

I don't subscribe to any religion myself, but I still find it hard to, upon listening to Renee Fleming's rendition of Marietta's Lute Song from Korngold's Die tote Stadt, not dream of living forever if only to keep on pressing the 'Replay' button on the stereo. Good singing is still alive and well. You just have to look at the right places for it!

Sources:
http://reneefleming.com
Renee Fleming - The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer (Penguin Book. ISBN: 0-14-303594-0)