By Márcio Bezerra
With more than 250 appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, five Grammy awards, the U.S. National Medal of Arts and even a national anthem performance at the Super Bowl, Renée Fleming surely deserves the title of “America’s Soprano.”
Her gorgeous voice and alluring-yet-approachable stage presence were the main reasons the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts received a substantially larger audience for her Sunday afternoon concert at the Classical Concert Series.
Fleming, like many singers at this stage in their career, has been devoting less time to demanding opera productions, shifting her attention to more intimate voice recitals, such as the one heard on Dreyfoos Hall.
Yet, notwithstanding her many qualities, there was something not completely satisfying at her performance.
The first part of the program was titled “Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene,” which is a project the soprano has undertaken in partnership with National Geographic. According to her, it is a collection of songs that reflect on the “human experience in the environment.”
Selections range from folk to Baroque, from Romantic to the music of living composers, with a video by National Geographic specially made projected in the background.
And here is where the problems began.
To start, the screen was not proportionate to the gargantuan Dreyfoos Hall stage. Nowadays, there is technology that would surround the singer on the stage, perhaps even being projected on the big black curtain.
Second, because the accompanying musicians had to perform without the usual acoustic shell, two kinds of amplification had to be used: A light one for the classical selections, and a more traditional mic for the popular numbers.
That was distracting, as one’s ear had to adapt back and forth when the format switched. Although Fleming’s voice sounded natural (and gorgeous) during the light-amplification moments, the Steinway piano sounded like a lesser, more metallic instrument, especially in the louder passages.
It was still a treat to hear such distinguished diva up close, and she did not disappoint in her renditions of classics such as “Care selve” from George Frideric Handel’s opera Atalanta (1736); “O mio babbino caro” from Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi (1918), and even “Danny Boy.” Her strongest moments came with the new music by contemporary composers such as Nico Muhly and Kevin Puts, although her rendition of “All Is Full of Love,” by the Icelandic pop star Björk was less than satisfying.
Collaborative pianist Inon Barnatan did a fine job, even performing two solo selections. Unfortunately, because of the microphones, the piano sounded less than beautiful, with the clarity of the pedaling in Felix Mendelssohn’s Rondo capriccioso (Op. 14) suffering the most.
Those problems did not deter the adoring audience from applauding the diva with an enthusiasm that is rare on these shores. Nonetheless, a more traditional, unamplified program devoid of visual distractions would have been much more satisfying.