There are various
Renee Fleming collections on the market, but there is a lot to be said for this collection of numbers she sang at New York's Metropolitan Opera, a house with which she is profoundly identified. The selections were made by
Fleming herself, and they are hard to quarrel with. This voice of a thousand shades is displayed in all its variety right off, with startling shifts from
Mozart to
Verdi to
Strauss to
Britten. As things proceed, one can't help but be amazed by
Fleming's linguistic facility, with pieces in Italian, German, English, French, Russian, and Czech all inhabited fully. The two varieties of English, and the two entirely different dramatic atmospheres, in
Britten's
Peter Grimes and
Carlisle Floyd's
Susannah, are flawlessly mastered. The recordings mostly date from between 1994 and 2008, the golden age of
Fleming's voice, but there is a
Merry Widow from 2015 that shows her in fine form. Her pathbreaking appearance in
Handel's
Rodelinda is included; it is easy to forget that top-rank sopranos didn't often appear in Baroque opera until
Fleming came along. The Met is not a comfortable house for live-recording engineers, but the material is well-mastered and comes off as a sonic whole. Beyond
Fleming fans, who will love this, this is a fine collection for anyone wanting to appreciate what
Renee Fleming is all about. ~ James Manheim
