Soprano Renee Fleming is the rare performer who has straddled both the classical world and that of popular music. While most famous for her lyric soprano range, she has tackled arias in several languages outside of her native English. Her voice has been featured in several films, most notably in the scores of the Oscar winners The Return of the King and The Shape of Water.
Her 2023 Grammy-winning album Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene has been turned into a performance piece, of which she debuted in Northeast Ohio at EJ Thomas Hall on Tuesday evening. Singing in front of a screen, a movie produced by National Geographic punctuated man’s relationship with the natural world. She expressed a desire to discuss nature as both “our inspiration and our victim.” The roughly fifty-minute piece showcased Fleming singing about our unique place in the world and how nature is impacted by humankind’s existence. Her hope, she said, was that this opera piece could both rekindle peoples’ love of the world around us and encourage efforts to “protect the planet that we all share.”
The second half of the program, commencing after a short intermission, were a few staples from Ms. Fleming’s repertoire: “Laudate Dominum” by Mozart opened the second half, which was followed up by two arias from Handel and Puccini. She then dove into a Cole Porter tune, “Down in the Depths (on the 90th Floor), and then finished the night with “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from R&H’s Carousel. Her encore, if one could call it that, was a rousing audience participation singalong of “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady.
Joining her in accompaniment was Ohio-native Howard Watkins, esteemed pianist, who holds a Doctorate in Chamber Music from the University of Michigan.
The promoters of the event are The Tuesday Musical Association, the oldest association of its kind in the country, with a history dating back to 1887. Founded in Akron, its mission is to enrich the cultural life of Akron and its surrounding communities by “advancing the positive power of music in our community.”
