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Stories   >   Renee Fleming w/Inon Barnatan in recital, outdoes three big concertos at the Aspen Music Festival / The Aspen Times

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Renee Fleming w/Inon Barnatan in recital, outdoes three big concertos at the Aspen Music Festival / The Aspen Times

Posted: July 18, 2023

One of the most beloved and celebrated singers of our time, soprano Renée Fleming is renowned for her sumptuous voice, consummate artistry, and compelling stage presence. Awarded America's highest honor for an individual artist, the National Medal of Arts, as well as four Grammy awards, she brought her voice to a vast new audience in 2014, as the first classical artist ever to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl.

Performing in opera houses, concert halls, and theaters around the world, she is a recording artist with Decca Classics. Recent triumphs have included a Tony-nominated appearance on Broadway in Carousel, the opening performances at The Shed opposite actor Ben Whishaw, and the London premiere of the musical The Light in the Piazza. As a musical statesman, Renée has been sought after on numerous distinguished occasions, from the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to performances in Beijing during the 2008 Olympic Games. In 2014, she sang in the televised concert at the Brandenburg Gate to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 2012, in an historic first, she sang on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in the Diamond Jubilee Concert for HM Queen Elizabeth II. In January 2009, Renée was featured in the televised We Are One: The Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial concert for President Obama. She has also performed for the United States Supreme Court and, in 2009, celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Czech Republic’s “Velvet Revolution” at the invitation of Václav Havel. A ground-breaking distinction came in 2008 when Renée became the first woman in the 125-year history of the Metropolitan Opera to solo headline an opening night gala.

In a rare double-header for a classical singer, Renée was featured on the the soundtrack of two Best Picture and Best Soundtrack nominees at the 2018 Academy awards, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and The Shape of Water, which won both prizes, as well as the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival. Renée was heard as the singing voice of Roxane, played by Julianne Moore, in the recent film of Ann Patchett’s best-selling novel Bel Canto. Renée recorded Alexandre Desplat’s theme song, “Still Dream” for the soundtrack of the Dreamworks Animation feature, Rise of the Guardians. This fourteen-time Grammy nominated artist has recorded everything from Strauss’s complete Daphne to the jazz album Haunted Heart to the movie soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

In 2017, Renée brought her acclaimed Marschallin in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier to the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and the Metropolitan Opera, in a new production by director Robert Carsen. A DVD of that performance was subsequently released by Decca. In spring 2017, Renée’s 2009 album Signatures was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for the National Recording Registry, as an “aural treasure worthy of preservation as part of America’s patrimony.” A four-time Grammy winner, with 16 nominations, Renée won the 2013 Best Classical Vocal Solo Grammy Award for Poèmes (Decca, 2012), a collection of 20th-Century French music, including works composed especially for her by Henri Dutilleux. She is a prolific recording artist of extraordinary artistic range, as demonstrated by her most recent recordings. Her newest album, Lieder: Brahms, Schumann, Mahler, was released by Decca Classics in June. Her previous album, released in September 2018, was Renée Fleming: Broadway, featuring great musical theater songs from the 1920’s to the present day, with the BBC Concert Orchestra. And prior to that, her recording Distant Light with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and released in 2017 by Decca. It features Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, The Strand Settings, composed for Renée by Anders Hillborg, as well as songs by Björk in new orchestral arrangements. In 2015, she was featured with Yo-Yo Ma on the Billy Childs album, Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro, their track “New York Tendaberry” winning the Grammy for Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals. Renée’s first-ever holiday album, Christmas in New York, was released in 2014, and was the inspiration for a special on PBS. In June 2010, Decca and Mercury records released the CD Dark Hope, which features Renée covering songs by indie-rock and pop artists.


The Aspen Times writes….Weekends are busy at the Aspen Music Festival with the big orchestra concerts in the Benedict Music Tent Fridays and Sundays, a marquee recital Saturday evenings and a chamber music concert featuring faculty and visiting soloists on Saturday afternoons. You never know which will make the biggest impact.

Soprano Renée Fleming, who co-runs the opera and voice program here, delivered the biggest rewards Saturday night. Demand for tickets had forced the festival to move it from the intimate confines of Harris Hall to the 2,000-seat music tent. With Inon Barnatan on piano, Fleming explored a range of music connected to nature, which dovetailed with her most recent album, “Voice of Nature,” and the festival’s theme for 2023, “Adoration of the Earth.”

New music on the program, by Nico Muhly, Caroline Sh

w and Kevin Puts, stood its ground with such masters of the past as Händel, Hahn and Liszt.

Händel’s ode to a tree, “Ombra mai fu,” opened the proceedings, followed immediately by Muhly’s “Endless Space,” written for Fleming’s album, quoting two authors’ concerns about climate change. Both pieces take advantage of Fleming’s unaffected vocal tone and ability to convey meaning with remarkable ease. The first half ended with the Reynaldo Hahn songs “L’heure exquise” and “Les étoiles,” which use the sky’s illuminations to inspire sultry music.

Vocally, the first half felt like a tuneup for a glorious second half, Fleming’s voice finding a freedom and spaciousness in several sublime songs. Shaw’s delicate setting of “Aurora Borealis,” based on a 2006 poem by Mary Jo Salter, manifested the northern lights in music Barnatan played with utmost sensitivity. Fleming brought great joy to a pair of Liszt songs and a couple of Grieg songs that deserve wider hearing. But the best was a new and expansively operatic song by Kevin Puts, “Evening,” set to a 2019 poem by Dorianne Laux that touches on a spectrum of emotions before coming to rest in resignation.

Diego Redel/Courtesy photo

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