Renee Fleming Recital

Photo by Chris Lee in New York Classical Review

Renee Fleming at Carnegie Hall

 

Renee Fleming has been very busy off stage lately so I went to her Carnegie Hall recital last night thinking I might never see her again. Was I wrong. She swept in wearing a Happy Birthday Mr President dress and knocked off some Brahams' lieder and several volumes of Yates' poetry set by Andre Previn, to whom she blew kisses, then she changed into a Marie Antoinette silk pannier with a huge train and sang new songs by Caroline Shaw ("Are you excited? I am!"), four songs by Egon Kornauth ("I'd never heard of him, have you?") and most of Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos ("I've only done it once, so I sing it in recitals"). The encores included "Since There Was You" which she dedicated to Barbara Cook ("She told me 'never do more than you can; you are always enough' "). I floated home, euphoric, thinking, "well, speak for yourself Renee."

Read George Grellar's review in New York Classical Review