This idea–a recital focusing on songs with themes of night–is not new; but it’s also not surprising when you consider such a subject’s enticing possibilities for poets and composers, and thus the wealth of repertoire it has produced. One of the more memorable forays was by Dawn Upshaw on a recording for Nonesuch titled White Moon–Songs to Morpheus. It was a brilliant piece of work–a study in intelligent, creative programming, skillfully, beautifully sung. I can’t say the same for this self-indulgent, ineffectual recital, made up of wrongly chosen songs–wrong, that is, for Renée Fleming’s voice. For as much acclaim as she has received, I expected much more sensitive singing, better control of the subtleties of song-interpretation, and at the very least, technically assured performances. Instead, we find a voice that doesn’t seem to know what kind, color, shape, or size it is; a voice that constantly switches and shifts depending on the register or vowel; a voice that hides in a strangely covered lower register then explodes in more open upper notes, which can change just as easily to a wider, shrill quality. To make things worse, you rarely can tell what language Fleming is singing–articulation seems only incidental to her interpretations.
The singer’s fans will think I’m crazy, but these performances prove once again that just because a singer is totally in love with certain repertoire doesn’t mean that he or she has any business singing it. Fleming’s voice–and, to no small degree, her technique–just isn’t suited to many of these songs, especially the French ones. For instance, she has no clue how to sing Debussy’s “Beau soir”–not only is her French highly suspect, but the whole thing, from tempo to dynamics to phrasing, never finds a convincing, comfortable, coherent expressive point of view (a problem with many of the other selections as well). In the songs that demand more overt drama, she seems at home–a place where a little messiness is less noticeable, where splashy extremes (of dynamics and emphasis) distract from the less carefully controlled soft touches. Fleming’s accompanist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, is an experienced and attentive partner who gets major credit for sensitively following and authoritatively leading where required. Ultimately, you’re left either to puzzle over this disappointingly performed, confusingly programmed recital–or, as I would suggest, to pull your Dawn Upshaw recordings from the shelf and (for night songs) listen to White Moon or (for French songs) her superb 1999 Paris recital Hommage à Jane Bathori on Erato.
