I enjoyed this recital
very much. Fleming has a famously beautiful
voice, subtly modulated, well equalized.
She is equally impressive when the music
sits low as when it takes her high.
There are no breaks to reveal technical
limitations and her singing is always
pleasurable. I like the thicker sound
she cultivates towards the chest voice
and a touch – just a touch – of the
Bartoli Effect in, say, Endless Pleasure,
though she lacks the Italian’s daemonic
change of colouration, aspirates and
inability to relax the line.
But Fleming’s lower voice can be formidably
florid – sample Scoglio d'immota
fronte – and quite capable of enough
histrionic projection of its own. Compared
with Bartoli, Fleming’s Lascia ch'io
pianga is straighter; she doesn’t
sing as softly as the Italian, but neither
is her palette as self-consciously wide;
there’s something of Bartoli’s trill
there, though wisely I think Fleming
avoids the chasm of dynamics and biting
consonants that Bartoli parades. It
courts, but doesn’t attain, mannerism.
So yes I enjoyed the
recital but there’s a ‘but’. I found
much beautiful but as the recital progressed
I felt a sense of generic singing. Compare
her Ombra mai fù with
Lorraine
Hunt Lieberson’s. The differences
are subtle but telling, as indeed is
the fact that Fleming discards the recitative
leading to it. Lieberson’s is a voice
attuned with the utmost immediacy to
the intimacy of the text and to language.
Her relatively recent Handel recital
on Avie shows her contemporaries how
to inflect without exaggeration the
better to convey emotion. The graft
behind this is hidden from us but its
effect is transformatory. With Fleming
beauty for its own sake is more the
message and in the end that is what
limits real admiration for her otherwise
impressive singing. I’d draw particular
attention to Da tempeste il legno
infranto and to Ritorno, caro
e dolce mio tesoro where there doesn’t
seem to be a necessary differentiation
of tone and inflection. And whilst Let
The Bright Seraphim is indisputably
proficient (superb trumpeting from David
Blackadder by the way) it’s not really
thrilling.
Harry Bicket is a practised
hand at these things. I remember his
work with David Daniels with especial
admiration and he is thoroughly admirable
here - and the sound quality is first
rate. But in the end I was left slightly
disappointed by Fleming.
Jonathan Woolf
Renée Fleming (soprano) 
SACD
DECCA 475 6186 [70.22] 
