2010 album from the Opera star. Ren‚e Fleming describes Dark Hope as a "visit to a new, parallel universe." The album was produced by David Kahne (Regina Spektor, Shawn Colvin, Paul McCartney, Bangles, Sublime, and countless others) in New York City, and features a diverse and adventurous track listing. Universal. 2010.

Surely, Renée Fleming has one of the most beautiful voices to be heard anywhere today. It combines velvety warmth, creamy richness, soaring radiance, and flawless purity, and seems to flow out without effort, every tone impeccably centered and in tune, capable of almost too much variety of color and nuance. Fleming's breath control is incredible; she can spin out long, arching phrases and build up climaxes with thrilling intensity. The program of this recital displays Fleming's vocal and dramatic gifts to full advantage, and includes both familiar and lesser-known arias from Italian and French operas. Although some of these are not in her repertoire, she clearly feels close to them. The three opening Puccini favorites from Gianni Schicchi, Madama Butterfly, and La Bohème are a bit fussy and over-inflected, hardly suited to the characters' simplicity; but, from then on, Fleming seems completely at one with both her tragic and her lighthearted heroines. She captures their warm inwardness, rapture, passion, ecstasy, and desperation; darkening and lightening her voice at will. Her top notes soar gloriously, her trills laugh. The orchestra is splendid, supporting her all the way and sounding wonderful. --Edith Eisler

Renee Fleming, the most celebrated American soprano, presents an inspiring collection from her favorite sacred and spiritual repertoire. Violinist Mark OConnor joins her for a special performance of Amazing Grace. Fleming is accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Produced by Decca Music Group. 16 tracks: 1. Ave Maria 2. Jesu bleibet meine Freude 3. Dank sei dir, Herr 4. Ave Maria Schubert 5. Laudamus te 6. Panis Angelicus 7. Air: He shall feed his Flock 8. Simple Song 9. Pie Jesu 10. Domine Deus 11. Laudate Dominum omnes gentes 12. Air: Rejoice greatly, o daughter of Zion 13. Abends will ich schlafen gehn 14. L Adieu des bergers 15. Maria Wiegenlied, Op.76/52 16. Amazing Grace

This is a compilation--plus three previously unreleased selections--of some of the glorious Renée Fleming's finest work, 15 selections covering 13 composers. The rose-in-full-bloom quality of the voice is staggeringly beautiful: Her rendition of Rusalka's "Song to the Moon" is justly famous and is, alone, worth the price of this CD. Other highlights are Marietta's Lied from Korngold's Die tote stadt, an odd arrangement of the aria from Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasilerias No. 5, Manon's Gavotte, and a knock-down-gorgeous reading of Gershwin's "Summertime." The three new recordings are of Violetta's big first-act scene from La traviata, which features one of the most perfect trills heard since Joan Sutherland, a thrilling Cäcilie (R. Strauss), and a version of "You'll Never Walk Alone" which is so over the-top that it might make you look away in embarrassment. On the basis of this CD, one would have to acknowledge that Fleming is more interested in--and more successful at--pure singing than she is at character delineation (Butterfly sounds oddly like Wally who sounds too much like Norma), but it's not hard to tell why she's a superstar. Her voice and technique are one in a million. --Robert Levine

FLEMING RENEE HAUNTED HEART

Renée Fleming sings opera arias by Puccini and his contemporaries. Celebrating the composers of the Verismo style. Favorite Puccini arias from La Bohème, Turandot, Manon Lescaut, Il Trittico etc.
Rarely heard arias by other Verismo composers. World Premiere recording of the original manuscript version of the aria from Puccini s Manon Lescaut. Star tenor Jonas Kaufmann joins Renée Fleming for an irresistible melody from Act II of Puccini s La Rondine.

This is the special, deluxe edition! In addition to the Strauss program, a second disc which highlights Fleming's signature roles at the Metropolitan Opera is included. These extended scenes are drawn from her highly-regarded Decca discography. Renée Fleming, the world's preeminent lyric soprano, is joined by Christian Thielemann, internationally acclaimed for his performances of Strauss works, for this recording of the exquisitely beautiful Four Last Songs. These enduringly popular works have become signature pieces for the soprano and she was delighted for the opportunity to work with the gifted Thielemann. In addition, Fleming performs a selection of lieder with orchestra as well as arias from Ariadne auf Naxos and Die ägyptische Helena.. On September 22, Fleming will open the Met Opera Season with a Gala featuring her in her most acclaimed roles. This one-night-only performance will be broadcast live in HD to movie theaters throughout the US.

All singing is a kind of storytelling, and Renée Fleming, whose vast repertoire includes many works demonstrating the breadth and richness of the French tradition, is no stranger to the particular skills required of the art. Scheherazade, as she is usually spelt in English, was the teller of the Tales of the Arabian Nights, whose prowess at inventing stories enabled her to survive a Sultan's cruel decree for 1001 nights - and thereafter, presumably, live happily ever after. In 1888, the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov wrote a colourful orchestral suite celebrating her and some of her stories, which Maurice Ravel would certainly have known when, in 1898, he began an opera about her. Nothing seems to survive of that unfinished work apart from the overture, which is entirely separate from the group of three orchestral songs the composer wrote five years later. Ravel's Shéhérazade dates from his early maturity and its lush yet subtle harmony and refined if occasionally overwhelming orchestration are typical of the magic this delicate human being could create with his powerful art. They are settings of a poet whose real name was Léon Leclère (1874-1966), but whose pen name, which combined the hero of one of Wagner's operas with the villain of another, was Tristan Klingsor. The cycle was first performed in Paris in May 1904. The first song conjures up a vision of Asia, an Asia of the imagination drawn from picture books and fairy tales and including mystery, violence, beauty, eroticism, and a variety of perfumed scenes from Syria, Persia, India and China as if visited on a flying carpet. The second, La Flûte enchantée, begins with the tones of the instrument. The singer is listening to it from inside a house where her master is asleep. She is a servant, and her lover, outside, plays the flute. In the final song, L'Indifférent, a young man of ambivalent sexuality strolls attractively by a house from where the singer watches and invites him in. But he merely passes on, with a graceful gesture. Olivier Messiaen composed Poèmes pour Mi for his first wife, the violinist and composer Claire Delbos. They had met at the Paris Conservatoire, where both were students, and soon they were giving recitals together. They married on St Cecilia's Day (22 November) 1932. "Mi" was the composer's pet name for his wife. Messiaen went on to compose, in 1936, this cycle of nine songs to his own texts - both intimately personal and religious - celebrating their happiness. They were originally for voice and piano; he created an orchestral version the following year. With its immediacy and blend of simplicity with voluptuousness, the cycle has become one of his most performed works. Tragically, towards the end of the Second World War, Mme Messiaen's health declined. Following an operation she lost her memory and was hospitalised, remaining in institutions until her death in 1959. Together with the Chants de terre et de ciel (1938), which also celebrates the Messiaens' son Pascal, the Poèmes remain as a moving testimony to the short-lived happiness of the composer's first marriage. Messiaen himself died in 1992 at the age of eighty-three. His colleague Henri Dutilleux, eight years his junior, is fortunately still with us. His relatively small output is of consistent quality and imagination, as audiences both in France and elsewhere are increasingly appreciating. The recipient, especially in recent years, of several major awards - notably the Ernst Siemens Prize (2005), the Prix Midem (2007), an honorary fellowship from Cardiff University and the Gold Medal of London's Royal Philharmonic Society (both 2008) - Dutilleux is now attracting the widespread attention he has so long merited. He too studied at the Paris Conservatoire and later taught there, also enjoying an important professional relationship as Head of Music Production for French Radio from the end of the war until 1963. A member of no school, and not tied to any particular system of composition, Dutilleux has created a highly individual and distinguished aeuvre, indebted to a degree to his forebears Debussy and Ravel, but also occasionally lightly shaded by the experience of jazz. A master of the orchestra, he has composed two symphonies as well as two major concertos - one for cello (written for Rostropovich) and one for violin (for Isaac Stern) - in addition to piano music and chamber works. Vocal music has figured infrequently in his output, but the small selection of his works for voice clearly demonstrates the high quality of his musical thought. His first extant songs (Dutilleux has withdrawn some earlier examples) are the Deux Sonnets de Jean Cassou, composed in 1954 for voice and piano but later orchestrated. Cassou (1897-1986) was a museum curator who joined the French Resistance in 1940 when dismissed from his post by the Vichy government. His Thirty-Three Sonnets Composed in Secret (from which Dutilleux selects two) were created during his subsequent imprisonment, though not then written down as he was denied the means to do so; they were clandestinely published under the pseudonym Jean Noir in 1944 and their writer later received the Croix de Guerre. Dutilleux returned to vocal composition for the important orchestral cycle Correspondances, premiered by Dawn Upshaw and the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle in 2003, and has more recently been inspired by the voice and artistic personality of Francophone soprano Renée Fleming to compose Le Temps l'horloge - four songs plus an interlude positioned between the last two (2006-09). The first performance of the complete cycle was given by Fleming at the Théâtre des Champs-É´lysées, Paris, with the Orchestre National de France under Seiji Ozawa, on 7 May 2009. The work employs a large orchestra with a couple of unusual additions - harpsichord and accordion - used with Dutilleux's regular selectivity and subtlety. His choice of poets is again characteristic. The first two songs - Le Temps l'horloge and Le Masque - set words by Jean Tardieu, a poet and musician alongside whom Dutilleux worked for many years at Radio France. Unusually, the interlude is also associated with a text - Tardieu's prose poem Le Futur antérieur - though it does not set it. The text of Le Dernier Poème is by the Surrealist Robert Desnos, another member of the French Resistance, who died in the Nazi concentration camp at Terezín (Theresienstadt) in 1945. Finally, Dutilleux turns to his beloved Baudelaire, whom he cites as a major influence on his creativity and whose work also provided the title for his cello concerto, Tout un monde lointain. Enivrez-vous is one of Baudelaire's posthumously published Petits Poèmes en prose, urging the necessity for a drunken (presumably meaning thoroughly uninhibited) approach to life in all its aspects. George Hall

RARELY PERFORMED OPERA ARIAS AND FORGOTTEN GEMS CAREFULLY SELECTED BY TODAY’S LEADING SOPRANO. HOMAGE, THE AGE OF THE DIVA IS A TRIBUTE TO THE ARTISTS WHO GAVE LIFE TO THESE WORKS.

Acclaimed throughout the world’s great opera houses, American soprano Renée Fleming enjoys particular success in roles from the late 19th and early 20th centuries when glorious vocal writing and opulent orchestrations took the art of opera to new heights.

In studying and performing this passionately lyrical music Renée Fleming became increasingly fascinated with her predecessors - sopranos of a golden age who made this intensely emotional music their own.

In her latest recording project Renée Fleming pays tribute to remarkable singers including Lotte Lehmann, Maria Jeritza, Rosa Ponselle and Mary Garden; women who achieved iconic status in a rapidly changing world in which their fame was spread through recordings, film and advertising - a time which could be described as ‘The Age Of The Diva’.

The beautiful music links the 19th century of Verdi and Gounod with the 20th century of Korngold and Richard Strauss. All of the pieces were championed by the Divas of the past, some of them come from operas that are still very popular today (Tosca & Il Trovatore), many others are from operas that have been forgotten. Renée Fleming rediscovers these "lost jewels" - including arias by Cilea, Smetana, and Rimsky-Korsakov - that were big hits during their time and now presents them for a new generation.

For this passionate, richly orchestrated repertoire, the role of the orchestra is enormously important and Renée is joined by the acclaimed Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre under their music director Valery Gergiev.