It may be neither if you are familiar with Haunted Heart, Renée Fleming’s 2005 album of pop songs. Also, if you happen to know that at college she earned money singing in a jazz trio in a club in Potsdam, N.Y. For all we know, other opera singers had similar adventures early in life.
But the album Dark Hope, which will be released tomorrow, is pure indie rock and is unique for a singer of her stature. It places her in what she calls “a parallel universe that occupies the other extreme of the spectrum.” One can hear one of the new songs on YouTube. Click Endlessly Renée Fleming and you will hear her singing a melancholy melody with a rock beat, accompanied by visuals of her gorgeous face. You will be surprised because you will enjoy it even if you are normally at home, as she is, chez Mozart, Rossini and Richard Strauss.
The “parallel universe” is, of course, inhabited almost exclusively by the young, such as Renée Fleming’s two teenage daughters, Amelia and Sage, who, as she told interviewers recently in London, were highly dubious at first about her project. But when they heard the final product “they were not embarrassed.” This surely is an American understatement.
Renée Fleming, too, was dubious at first but when she listened to the words of some of the rock songs she heard she was impressed by their seriousness and social engagement. This may be one reason that eventually persuaded her. No doubt the promoters of Dark Hope had some difficulty deciding what the target audience was in the “parallel universe” most of whose inhabitants were unlikely to be impressed by the “crossover” aspects of the enterprise.
“Crossover” is the operative word. There are many precedents – Caruso’s Over There and Helen Traubel’s Take me out to the Ballgame. Yo Yo Ma does it and so does Joshua Bell. The punk violinist Nigel Kennedy deserves a chapter all to himself in the history of crossovers that is still to be written. Large sections would have to be devoted to the reverse situation, to pop stars crossing over. There are a number of borderline cases – Gershwin studying with Ravel and writing an opera. In 1976 Glenn Gould championed one of them – Barbra Streisand who had recorded songs by Debussy, Fauré and Hugo Wolf in Classical Barbra with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. No doubt there are many others.
What does it all mean? Surely not that the two universes are converging. In musical terms the abyss between them is as wide as ever, the new technologies notwithstanding. But it does mean that the musical public is becoming more ecumenical, that performers and consumers are trying to tear down barriers and are opening their ears and minds in all directions.
Their bright hope is – what else? – Dark Hope.
How cross must a crossover make one before it becomes shocking?
I have Kiri te Kanawa singing “Coming through the Rye” (not sponsored by Seagram’s, though…)
What about Bob Dylan’s Christmas Album?
Symphony orchestras have played Beatles’ songs. The Three Tenors have certainly gone thoroughly pop, around the fringes at least of rock.
Lots of pop/rock songs have borrowed themes from the three Bs and their colleagues.
Why not ‘variations on a theme by McCartney’? Of course for my generation, McCartney IS classical music, so there would be no crossover involved.
All very relevant.
The fact remains that I – who of course is never mentioned in any of my postings – was both shocked and surprised when I discovered Renée doing rock. I am not as blasé as some of my readers.
She denies that it is “crossover”. The phenomenon is an old one. There is a recording of Ezio Pinza singing “My Li’l Old Home in Texas” with the Sons of the Pioneers.
You are right, of course. One wonders why so many who are already at the top of their profession have done it. And are doing it. They are already rich and famous. Obviously one can never be rich and famous enough.
I am not shocked. If it gives her, or her daughters, pleasure, let her sing rock. There was a major article in Sunday’s LA Times on this subject, by their music critic. So I am not surprised. You are right, the Beatles are classical music for our generation, meaning ante-diluvial. Something Hildegard von Bingen.
As a matter of fact, my blog was based on the Tomasini story in the N.Y. Times – maybe reprinted in the L.A. Times. Two Sundays ago. I had just heard Renée Fleming sing Armida at the Met by satellite. That is why I was fascinated by this news. Armida is a coloratura tour de force but otherwise not memorable, and justifiably forgotten. A complicated story taking place at the time of the Crusades, derived from a tale by Torquato Tasso.
As the mother of a teen-age daughter, I am impressed. ‘Not embarrassed’ is the highest possible praise when coming from ones offspring.
Yes, I know. (I have a granddaughter, a year or two older than Lia.)