Homage: The Age of the Diva ~ Renee Fleming
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.25 You Save: $13.73 (76%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.81 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Homage: The Age of the Diva ~ Renee Fleming
Free Music Review: For the opera fan who has everything
Hit: 4 Stars
If you are looking for something to give a collector of opera CDs get this one. Most of the repertoire is less well known so you will most likely not be dupilcating too much of an existing collection.
Flemming sings this repertoire so well, perhaps someone will will be inspired to produce a production of one of these unusual operas so we can hear her sing some of these roles on stage.
Free Music Review: Today's Diva pays hommage to the past
Hit: 4 Stars
The most interesting parts of this disc are those exploring new territory. The results give us hope that Fleming will be given the opportunity to record some of these roles in their entirety, particularly Rimsky-Korsakov's Servilia and Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae.Free Music Review: An adagio homage...
Hit: 3 Stars
Listening to this recording reminds me of a stunning molasses sculpture. If there is such a thing, it would be artwork that is too sweet and lugubrious to be great art.
The three familiar arias by Cilea, Puccini, and Verdi, can be heard in more urgent readings by any number of spintos from past decades. (Think Price, Scotto, Freni, Tebaldi.) It's nice, but not essential, to hear these warhorses sung by Fleming.
The remaining arias are new to me. Hearing rarely performed arias sung by Ms. Fleming is worth the price of this disk. But, did she have to pick arias that, for the most part, are somber, dreary, and morose? Weren't some of the divas cited in the liner notes capable of joy, humor, or at least an "up" tempo?
I must agree with another reviewer, Dean Rishel, that Renee Fleming has a great voice. But why does she seem to communicate "...see what a great voice I have?" For whom is she singing? With all of these dirges, is she singing for a dead relative/relationship?
Free Music Review: Yet another disappointment from "La Renee"
Hit: 2 Stars
Before writing what will be mostly a negative review, I would like to say that no one was a greater fan of Renee Fleming than I was...when she first appeared as a nascent superstar. Her "Four Last Songs" and early operatic recital with Solti conducting are terrific. She was a wonderful singer with musicianship, artistry, discipline, and of course, a beautiful voice.
The voice is still beautiful, but somewhere around 2000 it all started going bad. About the time the two recitals called "Renee Fleming" and "The Beautiful Voice" were made, it stopped being about discipline and artistry and brilliant music, and it became all about Renee. The interpretations started becoming mannered, jazz inflections crept in, self-indulgence reared it's ugly head, and it all became, in the words of Mad TV's "Stuart" character, "Look What I Can Do!" I had so hoped that Maestro Gergiev would be able to do what Solti and Eschenbach had done - make Renee behave, and create a recital with honest depth where the music was paramount. Sadly, it didn't happen. Although there is much on this disc that is beautiful, we never forget that it is the Diva Renee, trying to show us what she can do: hold a note longer than everyone else, sing an aria more slowly than anyone else, share her "superior" vocal acting and interpretations, be the singer who truly inflects ("gets it") and shows us for the first time how to dramatise this or that aria. Truth to tell, there isn't one aria on this disc that isn't seriously flawed by some of Renee's faux insights or "superior" vocalism.
Such a shame. A gorgeous voice owned by a singer who can't or won't get out of her own way and just sing the music.
Free Music Review: Renee! Pick up the pace girl!
Hit: 2 Stars
Maria Callas said as a soprano you should be able to sing everything. People may not like the interpretation but musicality should never waver. Well, Renee! Your tempi are so slow that I lost interest in most of this CD. Still love you. I cannot recommend this CD.