Renée Fleming PR latest: She wants to be Katherine Jenkins
mainThe publicity juggernaut that has accompanied the diva’s present run at the Met has just sprouted a new shoot.
Apparently, she is going to sing Carousel on Broadway in 2018.
Just like Katherine Jenkins at ENO.
Sort of.
And just like the even greater Cheryl Studer who has been singing Nettie Fowler in Carousel, to critical acclaim, in a run that started late last year in Basel, Switzerland. Final performance in the run is coming up on April 29th.
https://www.theater-basel.ch/Spielplan/Info-Carousel/oj0V60WE/Pv4Ya/
How is this like Katherine Jenkins? Renee can sing.
And she will not sing the same role!
I am not ‘a fan’ of Katherine Jenkins, merely a former professional violinist of 35+ years’ experience.
The two ladies are different in many respects. KJ has never ever claimed to be an operatic singer, merely a singer who sings (some) music from opera. She also performs lighter stuff, including a fairly successful Carousel, if one believes newspaper critics.
Renée Fleming, on the other hand is an operatic soprano, who, although probably near the end of a pretty illustrious career, feels that she has a place in lighter pieces, and good luck to her.
By the by, these Basel performances are unamplified. Unlike everything on Broadway nowadays. Fleming will surely benefit from an amplification system, as she needs it (see Metropolitan Opera Der Rosenkavalier).
“Nowadays” is now nearly 60 years…http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/theater/l-sound-in-the-theater-amplification-run-amok-054950.html
I remember Rise Stevens once told me (claimed, at any rate) that the production of The King and I in which she starred in 1964 at State Theater was the very first “full” show to use body miking. I don’t know if that is in fact true, but she lamented that fact.
I must get better glasses. I read ‘body milking ‘
I chortled
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG8hzVz8qwI
That letter, written in 1996, was certainly prescient. In the world of opera, it won’t be long before we can pick and choose casts, virtually, so that Maria Callas will be your Violetta for every performance everywhere. And it will draw the final nail in the coffin.
It’s been a while since the last reference to KJ. I thought it was too good to last.
So long as she leaves opera alone and keeps her head below the parapet, leave her alone. It’s counterproductive.
Honestly, why do I even visit this site? It’s so full of hot air and needless disparagement. This isn’t “news.” It’s being a petty arsehole.
Sadly, those seem to be the very reasons that many of us do visit the site…
Unless, of course, the hot air agrees with you. Can’t stand the heat? Then get out of the kitchen.
touché….I love Classical gossip…..bring it on.
I can stand the heat. It’s the fetid flatulence that sometimes invades this space. I won’t mention any names.
Your own? Because in addition to nosey, you most mistakenly believe you have jurisdiction over others.
No, not really. I just have views. As — obviously — do you.
I’m sure KJ takes all the leg pulling in her stride. Friends of mine emailed from their cruise ship in Dubai and thought that she was not only a ‘very talented singer’ but also a ‘very lovely lady’. Whether she was shovelling the $$ in on or off the ship, I cannot say. I doubt that cruise liners can pay her kind of fee.
Years ago (in 1973), having retired from ‘serious’ opera work, Irmgard Seefried took on the occasional light role. I heard her that year in Udo Juergens’s ‘Helden, Helden’ in the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. The voice was clearly past its peak, but she knew how to act, how to use the voice intelligently and musically, and how to manage her stage presence. In that repertoire she was still delightful.
Sadly Renée doesn’t really have those musical and stage skills to fall back on, without the voice, there’s not much else.
I’ve seen Shirley Verrett and Stephanie Blythe sing Cousin Nettie. Does NL have any problems with either of THOSE sterling singers?