Renee Fleming offers "Dark Hope" with sultry electronic pop rock CD out June 8

Renee Fleming sings intimately on new age CD

Renee Fleming usually sings soprano with no microphone to opera houses yet on her new CD Dark Hope just out, she sings earthy and sultry, skipping her soprano high notes and sounding like a mellow mezzo on a diverse arrangement of acoustic and electronic pop rock.  The popular audience may not know this opera diva even with her worldwide host chats broadcast from the Met.  However I awoke one morning to see none other than Renee Fleming singing on Good Morning America, looking as if she belongs in the vintage sisterhood with Grace Slick, singing with a hip young electronic band of men who could be her sons.  She sings throbbingly the song Endlessly by Muse.

Hopelessly, I’ll love you endlessly but I won’t give you up . . . if the moment ever comes.

Here's the video from Youtube.

That haunting voice . . . the dark outfit . . . the long hair . . . could this really be Renee Fleming?
Here is the trailer with clips from her various performances including the BBC:  Dark Hope.

Renee’s moment has come. After a long career in opera, it must be a lot of fun to have the confidence and freedom to indulge in experiments or one’s private passions, a pet project. While she may not be singing the answers, she articulates a range of emotions, she communicates and lets the listeners do what they will given her take on life as an adult.
 

The look

Her look seems to be a departure. Is it her getting more comfortable in her own skin now that she has matured and accomplished her dreams?  Her black and white CD cover has her looking sexy and natural, her blond hair long, windblown and streaked rather than the corporate perfection and silk you see at the Met. She has youthful bangs and long dangly earrings and smoky eyeshadow. Given her bewitching performance as a sorceress in Armida recently, she could be in the parallel realm of Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac. That character was no Glenda the good or the popular and basically tears the house down in revenge against her lover when given the choice. 
 

Met concludes 2010 broadcast season with new Armida starring Renee Fleming as sorceress 

This is Renee's second starring role at the Met this season, each of which are part of the live worldwide broadcast series.  Renee Flemming stars in Der Rosenkavalier.

Most of the season Renee hosted the live broadcasts, of which Armida serves as the grand finale. 

Met LIVE HD broadcast of "Hamlet" with Keenlyside, Petersen hosted by Fleming

Met LIVE HD broadcast of "Carmen" with Garanca and Alagna, hosted by Fleming

Met LIVE HD broadcasts enlivened by backstage interviews, Renee Fleming

Met LIVE "Simon Boccanegra" with Placido Domingo hosted by Renee Fleming

Met's LIVE broadcast of Verdi's Aida:  Captain loves a slave

The Audtion broadcast from the Met  

Renee going working class Brit with I'll Never be Your Stepping Stone

Likewise, Dark Hope may have a positive message but it’s packaged with some conviction not sugar. In Endlessly, she sings she will never give you up. Uh oh. Likewise, I’ll Never be Your Stepping Stone (Duffy): I’m standing upright on my own. Indeed. It’s the closest she gets to a high note, moreover. Take it out or leave me alone, she sings. I like the English phrase, “take it out” which means to stop it. You hear it on East Enders or Only Fools and Horses. Working class Brit. That’s working class. What’s this?
 

The instruments too sound modest. No orchestra. Today (Jefferson Airplane) has acoustic sounds of flute and steel string guitar; It’s a serious and introspective declaration of immediate emotion that can’t be contained any longer.

Today I realize how much I’m in love with you . . . today . . . please listen to me, it’s taken so long to come true . . . it’s all for you. All for you.
 

Admittedly Oxygen (Willy Mason) sounds early Beatles cute and whimsical and upbeat. She tries to be understanding and philosophical . . . it’s an adorable song full of innocence. If you’re afraid to catch a dream, weave a basket and I’ll float them down the riverstream . . .
 

No One’s Gonna Love You (more than I do—important phrase) has a similar lighthearted innocent hippie sound.
 

Soul Meets Body (Death Cab for Cutie) sounds almost 1970s harpsichord or church organ hip and retro yet electronic and new. Driving steady high stamina. She continues to let her voice roll with a sultry rough edge, more like a diamond in the rough than a polished diamond. In the speaking range, something a mortal could emulate and sing along to when one would never dare attempt an operatic level, an Olympian feat of mastery and endurance like a marathon.
 

She sounds particularly heart achy on Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes. You get some strong drum beats and a churchlike choir rising like the heat into a sense of affirmation. Mad World by Tears for Fears leads into this, a song full of description of emotions. The songs tend to sound free of pretense and drama, a simple attempt to communicate things like understanding of confusion and alienation rather than an escalation of it for melodramatic purposes or comedy. She is trying to connect, not entertain.
 

She sings in Intervention by Arcade Fire,

Some debts you’ll never pay. You work for the church while your family dies . . . whose going to throw the first stone, whose going to reset the bone . . . ?  I can taste your fear . . . get your money back somehow . . . singing hallelujah with fear in your heart . . .

She builds on this contained and deliberate religious energy with Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen which becomes the finale. You know, the song from Shrek. So it ends on a tone of reverence and joy and gratitude. Some delicate and ethereal harmonics in this one.
 

She also sings intimately in that she’s in a recording booth with a microphone rather than an opera house seating three or four thousand. Ah the beauty of a microphone. No wonder she sounds so relaxed.  I do admit knowing what she is capable of, I was anxious for her to let it fly.  It's just not that type of CD.

Her two daughters and her sister join her singing backup on some songs.
 

Renee covers the songs, nothing is original. Yet what opera singer writes her own material. She makes it her own and sounds original. She’s a class act, the performance is one befitting her stature and maturity. She's offering comfort and empathy and sounding relatively selfless.  No diva here.  Being about Renee’s age (I’m fifty) I find this all so cool and fun, as if the singer has been watching and listening. Hope it’s not lost on her opera fans and they respect or at least accept or enjoy it in the spirit of artistic freedom. 

Dark Hope is on Decca produced by David Kahne in New York City.
 

Metropolitan Opera presents Summer HD encores in theaters; Announces new HD season including new production of Ring Cycle

A Night at the Opera from Marx Brother 1935 airs on PBS 

SF Opera presents Charles Francois Guonod's Faust with Secco, Racette, Relyea

Wagner's Die Walkure Americanized and updated by Francesca Zambello

Seattle Opera's Ring Cycle:

Greer Grimsley--Seattle Opera's  Wotan--appears on cover of Opera News June 2010

Seattle Opera's Ring Cycle:  Women warriors need heroes and protection from cowards

For more articles by this writer, check out the San Francisco Theater blog.

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-30274-SF-Theater-Examiner

You may subscribe by RSS feed.

Dreamgirls national tour to play San Francisco's Curran Theater

Beauty and the Beast Broadway musical comes to SF summer 2010

Young Frankenstein new monster musical coming to SF June and

Peter Pan debuts in America at SF's ferry park with 360 degree state of the art theater in the round

Broadway comes to San Francisco 2010-2011 with Shrek, Blue Man Group, Billy Elliot, Next to Normal, Rock of Ages

The Tosca Project a universal tribute to San Francisco through history, full of music and dance

The Tosca Project world premiere at ACT by Val Caniparoli and Carey Perloff

Cirque du Soleil's Alegria a paradox

Cirque du Soleil's new Viva ELVIS at new ARIA resort and casino in Las Vegas, via Virgin America (part two)

Cirque du Soleil's new Viva ELVIS (part one)