Here’s a metaphor you couldn’t make up. As Renée Fleming finished singing “O mio babbino caro” with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, I looked down and noticed my watch had stopped. How appropriate for a performer who, well into the fifth decade of her career, still demonstrates a vocal quality that sopranos half her age would envy! The passage of time seems to elude America’s diva. Fleming utterly convinced as the lovesick young girl imploring her father for permission to marry, her silvery high notes drifting into the crisp night air, and her style and stamina impressed throughout the rest of the evening’s generous program.
Fleming delivered several of her calling cards throughout the two-hour concert: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s You’ll Never Walk Alone, which showed off a surprisingly luscious lower range, and “Musetta svaria sulla bocca viva” from Leoncavallo’s La bohème, a longtime favorite. But the bulk of the performance was given over to Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene, an outgrowth of her Grammy-winning album from 2022. She spoke with sincerity about the urgent need for climate action and the preservation of the world’s natural resources, and she partnered with National Geographic to craft a 45-minute visual essay illuminating what’s at stake if humanity passes the point of no return on climate change.
The film itself, projected above the SPAC stage while Fleming sang beneath it, proved more distracting than elucidating. There were moments that bordered on kitsch, as when Fleming performed Burt Bacharach’s What the World Needs Now Is Love to a slideshow of baby animals frolicking with their parents. (I’m also not sure the song’s message resonated with Fleming’s theme – in the midst of climate disaster, don’t we need mountains and cornfields as much as love?) Although often striking, the images felt randomly assembled and disconnected from the selected songs. In a live concert setting, the strongest message should come through the performer herself.