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SCRUTINY | Renée Fleming Soars, Roy Thomson Hall Flops

By Michael Vincent on September 22, 2016

2016/17 TSO Season Opener with soprano Renée Fleming at Roy Thomson Hall (Photo: Dale Wilcox)
2016/17 TSO Season Opener with soprano Renée Fleming at Roy Thomson Hall (Photo: Dale Wilcox)

Renée Fleming with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, conductor Peter Oundjian, at Roy Thomson Hall, Sept. 21.

[Originally published in the Toronto Star]

There is a dirty little secret about opening night concerts. It is the one night of the year that has nothing to do with music.

Sure the musicians are all there and the audience is hyped for a concert, but it is really about booking the glitziest star they can muster to match the enthusiasm for an upcoming season. The TSO wins this year’s razzle-dazzle award for nabbing superstar soprano Renée Fleming, who returned to Toronto Wednesday night after a six-year absence from the orchestra.

One of the finest lyric sopranos in the world, Fleming can pretty much do what she likes. One could only guess what her backstage rider might look like; one Gucci prom dress, a box of corn starch, seven Kadupul flowers, and 57 purple Skittles?

Despite the baggage that comes with a showy gala like this, Fleming’s voice was a combination of magic, agility and smooth cream. She backed it with an extraordinary humanity that audiences have long since fallen in love with. You feel her voice with a shiver. She is a fine singer-actor, too, and can work a crowd with the best of them.

But with Koerner Hall just down the street, the question becomes one of fit for a voice like Fleming’s at Roy Thomson Hall. The problem became painfully clear once she took the stage with Ravel’s Shéhérazade.

The piece sits in a fairly low register for a soprano and her voice was lost inside RTH’s cavernous acoustics. While it is the job of the vocalist to find a way to reach the back of the room, it became a losing battle that probably should not have been fought in the first place.

After intermission, things started to get better with a series of arias including Puccini’s “Sì, mi chiamano Mimì” from La Bohème. Donning a bouffant dress, Fleming stepped right into the role, dancing along with the solid TSO accompaniment. A savvy student of her audience, she filled the gaps with warmly received banter that eventually led to the lighter shade of Leoncavallo’s “Mattinata.” Singing playfully, she carried the concert favourite with grace and class.

A pleasant surprise was an excerpt from William Walton’s film score to Henry V, “Touch Her Soft Lips and Part.” The TSO played masterfully well and, dare I say, might have even upstaged Fleming’s carte blanche playlist.

Toward the end was a strange pops section from The King and I (Rodgers and Hammerstein). Singing with the aid of a microphone, Fleming’s jazz background kicked right in, but that didn’t help overcome the nagging struggle to hear her. There was also the matter of the jarring symmetry against the Neapolitan songs in the second half and, with the appearance of her low register again, even with the aid of the audience whistling along, her voice was last seen somewhere in Section C of the mezzanine.

By and large, there were just too many sticks in the wheels to keep this concert moving along freely.

Fleming closed with three encores, including “Summertime,” “I Could Have Danced All Night”, and “O mio babbino caro.”

#LUDWIGVAN

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Michael Vincent
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