Vassallo della man
“You see, I don’t play roles. I find color for every role inside of me.” The soprano Marina Poplavskaya likes to talk about how she sees music as colors. She is also given to morbidly poetic formulations like “Let the harmony penetrate you like a silent knife through your heart.” [New York Observer]
And no Fleming for the next two seasons?
ITDG, It could be Renee is cutting back on opera. I looked at Operabase and then checked the info there against the info on Fleming’s own website.
From August 2010 through July 2011 she only has three opera gigs, Armida and Capriccio at the Met, and Otello in Paris. Lots of concerts and recitals though.
The schedule doesn’t go any further than next summer but maybe that kind of proportion continues over the next few years. Perhaps Fleming is starting to slowly wind down her opera career in favor of concerts/recitals/recordings? As they used to say on “wheel of fortune” Big Money, Big Money!
That’s always been Renee’s modus operandi though – only 2 – 4 full productions a year, the rest being concerts and rectials. She has said so in interview many times, so I don’t think anything has changed in that regard recently – for her to do just 3 productions over a year is normal.
I do know that as at this time last year when she was in London for Traviata, the ROH had no specific plans to ask her back, but that may have changed in the interim.
Her desire to do Elsa and Ariadne is well known, also from interviews – I wonder if anything concrete is in place?
Fleming should have done Ariadne & Elsa at least a decade ago when she still… oops, I won’t get into that. I remember she tried a Meistersinger many years ago, but it wasn’t a great success (but not a failure either)… adequate but nothing special according to the critiques I read. I think the performance was in Europe (Germany or Austria). But for my money, Fleming still has just as much voice (and probably more) than Michaela Kaune or Annette Dasch, who are both garnering good reviews as Eva & Elsa respectively at Bayreuth, Hamburg, etc. But I think this positive critical response to Kaune & Dasch has much more to do with these two singers perfect idiom-based prononucation rather than their vocal reach & texture. German critics have a tendency to hold delivery of text as the most important element in judging a performance of German opera. Hence they could not greatly criticize Fleming (her German is quite adequate) but she was not raised speaking German, so her voice lacks that 3rd dimension of idiomatic delivery. Utlimately though, I can’t complain much about those German critics’ idiom-based judgments of their native works because I myself am guilty of the same thing, albeit in reverse. Although I was not raised speaking italian, I can’t stand unidiomatic pronunciation of the text in the italian operas. I know the difference.
Her Eva was at Bayreuth, I believe.
She talked about her Eva experience, saying she found the role too low, which is why she has never re-visited it, and probably why she has stayed away from Elsa and Ariadne until now.
Mme. Fleming’s Eva was indeed at Bayreuth and I remember reading then her NY Times interview in which she complained of the middle tessitura and the necessity of cutting through the orchestra as a most uncongenial experience. She said she was utterly delighted to return to Fiordiligi at that time.
For my part, I’ve long wished to hear her in Vanessa, as the passionate Nerva Nelli suggests in jest somewhere above, a part that would seemingly suit her to a tee. Perhaps she does not want to seem “old” on stage as Vanessa is supposed to be a ‘beautiful woman of around forty’, and as she usually portrays herself as a virginal maiden to a mid to late twenty-something.
Hard to know. I find her very perplexing
Renee is down for Rodelinda next year – then two seasons out. However, 2012 and 2013 are sketchy looking and very incomplete. I have been told that Renee is adding Ariadne auf Naxos and Elsa in Lohengrin to her repertoire. She has now sung one or two of the arias and the big duet from “Trovatore” – maybe Leonora is in her future but not at the Met?
What roles could she repeat in revivals? She has dropped the Contessa Almaviva and the Don Giovanni Donnas are gone from her rep. The Met could consider staging Strauss’ “Daphne” for her? Maybe “Armida” was the Waterloo for the Renee vanity vehicles at the Met? I would say Alcina would be a good fit still with Coote or Graham and De Niese instead of Dessay as Morgana? Bardon in the mix too? Is the Carsen production from Paris still around?
GM, I certainly don’t have any inside Renee info, but as I see it, she’s in a bit of a tricky spot.
The Armida pretty much showed to me that she can’t go home again, some of the roles she had earlier successes in may not work out so well. The comparison with the 2010 Armida against the much more successful Pesaro and OONY Armidas was not favorable. The Alcina and Rodelinda were nowhere near as long ago but even with those two she may get into the law of diminishing returns.
Personally my thinking is that she is better off trying out the Elsa/Leonora(ick)/Ariadne/Hanna stuff and risk falling on her face with soemthing new that have people saying, oh you should have heard her Fiordiligi (to pick an old role out of a hat) back in 19xx when she could still sing it.
Just my thoughts
I think it makes sense for Renee to go onward with new repertoire too, and she could have many extraordinary successes in her future if she does so. Armida struck me as a bit of an immature Netrebko-ish desire for an old fashioned prima donna vehicle (which is what I attribute Netrebko’s insistence on singing these bel canto title roles to instead of concentrating on the big lyric stuff she is really good at) – hopefully she’s grown out of it now. Rodelinda was a bit strange last time (I saw it live) and I doubt her approach has got any more conservative since, sadly. But Renee’s last Met outing as Rusalka was bloody marvellous – I was at that one too, and even JJ in the Post thought she was mostly vocally and dramatically impressive, so I don’t think that her powers are diminished in full lyric repertoire. Her return to Desdemona in Paris will be interesting because unless I’m mistaken she has left it quite a while since she last did it and it was always congenial for her, even if she was pretty unmemorable in it in London a few seasons back. Besides Ariadne and Elsa, I wouldn’t be too surprised if she ended up doing some Janacek, and I bet we get a Tosca from her before she retires. I don’t find the thought of a Trov Leonora hard to stomach – she is blazing in the YouTube video of the Act IV duet with Hvorostovsky.
CK, I think Renee is safest in the lyric soprano rep too. But she’s kept Rusalka and Desdemona active anyway, she did one at the MEt in 2009 and the other in 2008. So ther’s no big gap of time to span and any changes shoudl be fairly minor
Didn’t realise there had been another Desdemona in the mean time too – thanks for putting me right.
She won’t fall on her face as Elsa. God knows, if Solvieg Kringelbjorn could do it, Renee Fleming can, and possibly much better. Hanna will be a cake walk for her. The Trovatore Leonora is rather athletic and insistent upon the voice, but not in the ways Armida was, so she can do it if the mood strikes her. As for Ariadne, its really for a louder instrument, but voices like hers have done it, and its quite short, so she probably won’t hurt herself with that either.
However, someone else above mentioned Tosca for her. I would say that is not realistic, and even if she did it, it wouldn’t be that great. Underpowered like Georghiu is in the part. And she’s no Dorothy Kirsten (as we all know, Fleming lacks the kind of incisive technique that Kirsten had). Can anyone imagine her in the current MET production of Tosca, or getting asked to sing something like that at La Scala, or Salzburg, or in Berlin or Vienna, or anywhere else where she might conceivably sing? Maybe Washington would ask her, I guess.
I mentioned Tosca. NB at no point did I say I thought it was a good idea or an ideal role for her – just that I thought it would happen at some point before she retires.
Well, I’m thinking Elsa isn’t the greatest match for Renee because it is mostly set fairly low and the scoring is somewhat thick. Not impossible, surely, but Renee’s middle doesn’t have a lot of cut to it and I’m thinking she may fade away fairly often.
I also think it’s a little bit of an odd choice for a high profile singer in the later phases of her career. It seems a little more like a role younger sopranos do and then discard. Really Lohengrin and Ortrud are showier roles.
I’m not putting the piece down, actually I love Lohengrin, pretty much all of it, but those are my observations. I just can’t see these as a huge success for Fleming.
I don’t know if want to hear Fleming sing Tosca, but I sort of want her to try. I think it would push her in a good direction dramatically. Her “La voce” persona is just too bland for my taste.
How about VANESSA? Rolex could supply the stopped clocks…
In an interview earlier this year, Renee said she was going to be doing Streetcar “in New York in a couple of years”. Didn’t say specifically at the Met, but what other options would there be unless it is just going to be in concert? Anyone have any insight on this?
Actually, as I previously reported here, Fleming is slated to do Christine in Strauss’ “Intermezzo”
at the Salzburg Festival summer of 2015 together with
Thomas Hampson – should be a good new role for Fleming.
Doesn’t she have several children? I seen to recall at least three, each with a hippie type name. Surely, at her age, and level of financial success, she has enough money in the bank so that she can do a bit less and spend time with her children? Personally I think that is a quite plausible. And I suppose that at least once in a while she has a date too. Also, if she husbands her resources correctly, she could sing as long as TeKanawa has.
Your recall is a bit off- she has two daughters, one of whom has the perfectly normal (and operatic) name of Amelia.
Yes, and the other one has a hippie name, something stupid like SUN MOON HAPPY CHILD.
Sage. Miss Sage Ross.
Had she named her ‘Patchouli’ I think it would have been something hippy, but this name, other than being uncommon, has none of that.
Unless, of course, it’s actually ‘Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme’, to which I can only wince and utter, “pass the bong, dude”….
they should have a new production for norma. the current one is so fucking ugly
I wouldn’t call that a production. Merely a stage to support Jane Eaglen.
peter, thanks for letting me know about Verrett – I knew only about Stratas singing Mme. Lidoine at the Met (and might have guessed Norman) and it is good to learn these things.
The Dialogues cast for next week in the Garnier-designed Nice opera house is available here:
http://www.operabase.com/diary.cgi?lang=en&code=wfnio&date=20101007
It is a small enough house (800 seats, 200 standing) and I will be interested to hear these voices. And even though Blanche (Karen Vourc’h) does not have a crammed opera diary right now, I am booked in to see her here in Dublin next February when she sings in Honegger’s King David in a broadly similar-sized house.
BV, enjoy the Dialogues performance! Please report back. It’s always a special occasion to see that opera.
I wonder why Renee doesn’t do Adriana. She won’t be Olivero or Tebaldi but it’s not as if the world has been brimming over with great Adrianas recently. It’s a nice vanity warhorse for divas of a certain age that happens to be also extremely popular at the box office. I have a soft spot for the opera myself.