The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s program of works by Mozart and Kevin Puts, a composer championed by star Renée Fleming, was one of musical and artistic contrasts.
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In concert with Renée Fleming’s quietly authoritative stage presence, the performance offered frequent reminders of the special affinity between this singer and Strauss’s aristocratic women.
She can’t put her foot on the gas the way she used to but there’s still plenty of fuel in that tank.
In its first go-around in November 2022, Kevin Puts’s The Hours (libretto by Greg Pierce based on the novel by Michael Cunningham and the screenplay for the Stephen Daldry’s 2002 film was a box office bullseye for the Metropolitan Opera.
Renée Fleming arrived at Carnegie Hall on May 31 with something to prove.
The film of The Hours failed to effectively weave together the novel’s trio of threads of interiority about suicide and secondarily literary creation. I wondered if an opera would stand a better chance at achieving that? Based on Tuesday’s diva-encrusted stage premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, its creators didn’t pull it off either.
Concerts at Wolf Trap, mixed bags in more ways than one, provided fleeting glimpses of the old normal as moments of frisson mingled with more familiar monotony.
“While Renée Fleming performed without an audience, DG Stage offered Puccini’s beloved melodrama Tosca before an outdoor crowd in Naples.”
Renée Fleming presented a satisfyingly eclectic and quietly daring program of songs and arias, an interesting timestamp on a career that, despite its crepuscular vibe, seems as active as ever.
Another classic Met Live in HD performance, starring Renée Fleming, Ramón Vargas, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, conducted by Valery Gergiev.
If only she’d been able to sing more than 10 minutes of Bjork’s music!
“American soprano Renée Fleming, one of the most beloved and celebrated singers of our time, is donating her personal archives to Juilliard, her alma mater.”
Renée Fleming—stylish dame with a stylish name—who lived by jungle law in a big city and clawed her way to where the money was…
“This lavish new production stars Opera legend and Tony Award nominee RENÉE FLEMING.”
“Renée Fleming herself will sing, of course…”
Carnegie Hall’s season opener last night fetched the usual glitterati.
Prima donnas Reneé Fleming and Julianne Moore demonstrate the philosophizing skills for which sopranos are famous.
You naysayers out there who are guffawing at Renée Fleming’s long-anticipated descent into utter camp: hey, be nice!
While America’s Diva is off singing gala concerts from Mobile to East Lansing, who will take over the role of Nettie Fowler?
“Ms. Fleming, 58, and Ms. Dessay, 52, faced the same problem over the past decade or so.”
We leave behind the Vienna of the 1740s, the time of breeches, fans and white wigs.
All right, so Renée Fleming says she’s not retiring from opera at the moment, and who should know better than she herself?
“Time is a strange thing,” the lady observes, to a young man who cannot begin to understand what she is talking about.
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Pick a little, talk a little
Following the successful launch of the new regular feature The Talk of the Town in January, the team at the box is inviting contributions for a new quarter of operatic potpourri.
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