London,

Renée Fleming

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Festival Hall
Southbank, SE1,

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Renée Fleming should sprinkle some stardust

 

No diva: Renée Fleming

Not content to rest on her laurels, the American soprano Renée Fleming has been investigating unfamiliar repertoire in recent years.

For her Festival Hall appearance (following on the heels of a new CD, Verismo) she chose an unhackneyed programme including a couple of lightweight numbers from the other La Bohème – that by Ruggero Leoncavallo — and an aria from Umberto Giordano’s rarely heard Siberia. Those items were bookended by two more substantial ones: the Letter Scene from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Sola, perduta, abbandonata from Act IV of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut.

Any concert of such extracts struggles to achieve dramatic veracity and tension but one that has to contend with the insipid orchestral contributions of a Charles Dutoit — his bland account of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet music with the RPO in the first half was an omen of things to come — is really up against it.

Fleming managed to raise the emotional temperature only with the heartbreaking Manon Lescaut aria, twisting the knife in the social conscience to fine effect.

But the voice is indubitably a beautiful instrument: luminous, liquid and superbly controlled. It also has a winsome, girlish quality that came into its own in Tatiana’s Letter Scene — that outpouring of confused adolescent emotions — and in O mio Babbino Caro from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, the one concession to popular taste, offered as the sole encore.

All credit to Fleming for refusing to push the diva alert button. A sprinkling of stardust wouldn’t have gone amiss, however.

Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

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