MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Renee Fleming - Haunted Heart

Renée Fleming is widely hailed as "the queen of lyric sopranos," (Opera News). With countless roles performed and several critically acclaimed aria and opera recordings made in the nearly 20 years of her professional career, Renée Fleming, with her "fresh, lustrous voice of rare opulence" (Washington Post), is unique among singers of our time and has easily become "America's soprano of choice" (New York Times).

The range of the songs on Haunted Heart is a full octave below Fleming's usual tessitura, making this a very different voice from what her listeners are used to hearing. This is not Renée Fleming singing jazz as an opera singer; this is Renée Fleming exploring a completely different, highly individual method for making music. This lower range, enables her to use as intimate and personal a sound as possible - almost a whisper. "Singing in this low register isn't tiring or dangerous for my voice," Fleming notes, "In fact, our sessions took place throughout the period in which I rehearsed Handel's Rodelinda at the Metropolitan Opera, and I found them a relaxing vocal respite from the demands of baroque coloratura."