Renée Fleming gave a big-a$$ interview to Corriere della Sera the other day (online here). "Renée Fleming, la Grace Kelly della lirica" and "La regina del Metropolitan" is how the American soprano was described -- couched as an iconic figure that Hitchcock would have loved: "Blond and sweet, the face of an angel with an icy glance, markedly elegant in the most fabulous clothes with an intense sensuality hidden behind aristocratic mannerisms." Curtsey to the Queen, plebs!
She spoke about her latest CD, Dark Hope, and some of her past roles. She remembers her La Scala premiere in 1993 as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni which exited to great applause. But in 1996 she returned to boos for Lucrezia Borgia. What does she have to say about that: "Yeah, it was lame, but at La Scala, you know, that's what happens. They even booed Pavarotti. La Scala is a special theater, it's a temple of opera. Opera is like a sporting event, complete wtih the rallying fans on each side. To make sure that the incident it wasn't going to give me a complex, I came back as soon as I could -- 7 months later -- and it was a triumph."
And of the voice that her fans love so much? "It's a gift and a mystery, no one knows when it will go or when it will leave you. To sing is always a risk, at every age. But it's this fact which makes singing so exciting."
Renée is back in Italy, performing tonight in a Gala at Torre del Lago's Puccini Festival, a warm-up for a second Gala performance at Cortona's Tuscan Sun Festival.