It take bravery for an artist to compete, in the winter of her career, with the memories of her golden prime. Renée Fleming demonstrated such courage this past weekend at Tanglewood, where she joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in reprising selections from Der Rosenkavalier, nearly a decade after she retired her signature role, the Marschallin. In two excerpts that anchored an all-Strauss program, she displayed exemplary command of text and age-defying vocal mastery, inhabiting the character with the same passion and knowledge she exhibited on the opera stage.
Although the Princess von Werdenberg has become something of a grande dame part, the character’s age is likely closely to mid-thirties than mid-sixties. Nevertheless, given that the subject of passing time weighs heavily on her psyche, Fleming vividly communicated the world-weary knowledge gained from living with this music for decades. “Da geht ihr hin” was not entirely free of affect: Fleming employed an overly comic voice and posture while describing herself as “die alte Frau, die alte Marschallin”, and conductor Andris Nelsons occasionally pushed the kaleidoscopic strings and brass to the point of grotesquerie. Still, Fleming struck a convincing balance between humor and resignation that felt all the more poignant than it often does in a younger singer’s hands.
In “Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding”, Fleming superbly balanced the Marschallin’s desire to luxuriate in the affection of her young lover and the sharp knowledge that the days of her affair are numbered. When tasked with accepting that age and wisdom are ultimately gifts from God, she married a wry tone and a floating, silver-edged vocal line, conveying a resilience beneath the outward melancholy.
A suite of orchestral songs proved more variable. Fleming mastered the fast rhythms of Stӓndchen without sacrificing textual dexterity, although the creamy ascending high notes for which she has been justly celebrated have hardened somewhat. Her sound lacked a solid core at times, though to be fair, a refulgent middle register has never been her glory. In Befreit, Fleming struggled to sustain long-spun vocal lines against Nelsons’ decidedly unhurried tempi, resulting in phrases where her support ran out prematurely. Gesang der Apollopriesterin sounded too measured and deliberate to fully recount the ecstatic message of a religious devotee anticipating the return of her ideal. Fleming and Nelsons struck their best balance in an encore of Cӓcilie, which joined lushly Romantic orchestral playing with gleaming, full-bodied tone, capped with a solid B flat.
The remainder of the program kept up an operatic theme, with middling results. In the Symphonic Fantasy from Die Frau ohne Schatten, Nelsons struggled to cleanly introduce the multiple themes of the work, and a complete lack of rubato sent shimmering, suspended passages for strings crashing headfirst into aggressive brass chorales. (The brass playing throughout the concert was concerningly mediocre, with tuning issues compounding audible flubs.) The Suite from Der Rosenkavalier too often turned waltzes into frogmarches, and the martial quality Nelsons brought to bear occasionally resembled Sousa rather than Strauss.
After a full-throttle opening that had every section of the orchestra shouting over each other, the more subtle elements in the playing began to unravel – although there was some noticeable correction here, perhaps due to the BSO’s familiarity with this piece. More successful was the Trӓumerei im Kamin from Intermezzo, in which William R Hudgins’s amber-hued clarinet wafted above a bevy of warm strings, giving voice to the concept of marital bliss.
