Renée Fleming, soprano
PROGRAM
Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene
Renée Fleming, soprano
Howard Watkins, piano
The first half of this evening’s performance is accompanied by a film provided by National Geographic. The audience is asked kindly to hold applause until the end of the film.
Hazel Dickens: “Pretty bird”
Georg Frideric Handel: “Care Selve” from Atalanta
Nico Muhly, texts by Thomas Traherne and Robinson Meyer: “Endless Space”
Joseph Canteloube: “Bailero” from Songs of the Auvergne
Maria Schneider: “Our Finch Feeder” from Winter Morning Walks
Björk: “All is Full of Love”
Heitor Villa-Lobos: "Epílogo" from Floresta do Amazonas (piano solo)
Howard Shore: “Twilight and Shadow” from Lord of the Rings
Kevin Puts, text by Dorianne Laux: “Evening”
Curtis Green, text by Pearce Green: “Red Mountains Sometimes Cry”
Burt Bacharach and Hal David: “What the World Needs Now”
-Intermission-
Entr'acte:
Jackson Browne
“Before the Deluge” (recording)
Arrangement: Caroline Shaw, with Rhiannon Giddens, Alison Krauss, Renée Fleming, & Yannick Nézet-Séguin, piano
Richard Strauss
“Wiegenlied”
“Muttertanderlei”
Olivier Messiaen
Selections from Poèmes pour Mi
"Paysage"
“La Maison”
Ruggero Leoncavallo
"Musette svaria sulla bocca viva" from La bohème
Giacomo Puccini
"O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi
Traditional, arr. de Feo
“Danny Boy”
Andrew Lippa
“The Diva”
Note from Renée Fleming
When I was 14, the film Soylent Green was released, a sci-fi thriller about a dystopian future of worldwide pollution, dying oceans, depleted resources, and rampant starvation. The story was set in the year 2022.
The movie has faded from memory, but one scene left a profound impression. An aged researcher, unable to go on, has chosen assisted suicide at a government clinic. To ease his last moments of life, he is shown videos of a world that no longer exists: flowers and savannahs, flocks and herds, unpolluted skies and waters, all set to a soundtrack of classical music by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Grieg.
This scene captured my imagination in a terrifying way. The impact increased when I later learned that the actor playing the researcher, Edward G. Robinson, was terminally ill at the time it was filmed.
Fast forward to the pandemic. After more than two decades of constant touring, usually to urban cultural centers, performances abruptly ceased, and I suddenly found myself at home. I sought comfort in long walks outside near my house. I needed this time outdoors to maintain my emotional equilibrium, and I was reminded that nature would always be my touchstone. At the same time, the news about climate change grew more alarming: the extinction of animals we took for granted when we were children, the knowledge that white rhinos had disappeared from the wild, and daily reports of heat, fires, and flooding. I realized that the crisis we had been warned of for so long had arrived.
I thought of the great legacy of song literature that I love, when Romantic-era poets and composers reveled in imagery of nature, finding reflections of human experience in the environment. I decided to record some of this music, and to juxtapose these classics with the voices of living composers, addressing our current, troubled relationship with the natural world.
The result, in collaboration with my friend Yannick Nézet-Séguin, was the album Voice of Nature: the Anthropocene. When it received the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, I was thrilled, and I had the idea to tour music addressing this theme of nature as both our inspiration and our victim.
I was incredibly fortunate to connect with the imaginative, dedicated leadership at the National Geographic Society, the global non-profit committed to exploring, illuminating, and protecting the wonder of our world. It has been so exciting to work with this universally respected, landmark institution. I am deeply grateful for the help of President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Ulica, Chief Executive Officer Jill Tiefenthaler, and Producer/Editor Sam Deleon, whose expertise and vision have been instrumental in creating the video you will see in the second half of tonight’s program.
Thankfully, the stunning natural world depicted in this film still exists, unlike that movie scene so upsetting to my younger self. In blending these beautiful images with music, my hope is, in some small way, to rekindle your appreciation of nature, and encourage any efforts you can make to protect the planet we share.
Sincerely,
Renée Fleming
Biographies
Renée Fleming, soprano
Howard Watkins, pianist
Renée Fleming is one of the most highly acclaimed singers of our time, performing on the stages of the world’s great opera houses and concert halls. A 2023 Kennedy Center Honoree, winner of five Grammy® awards and the US National Medal of Arts, she has sung for momentous occasions from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to the Super Bowl. In 2023, she was recognized with the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in Davos, and the World Health Organization appointed her as Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health.
Renée received the Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo for her album Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene. She is currently touring with a concert program inspired by the album, with a special film created for the performance by the National Geographic Society. In May at the Metropolitan Opera, Renée starred in The Hours, an opera based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and award-winning film. In 2023, Decca released a special double-length album of live recordings from Renée’s iconic performances at the Metropolitan Opera, Renée Fleming: Greatest Moments at the Met. Her voice is featured on the soundtracks of Best Picture Oscar winners The Shape of Water and The Lord of the Rings.
Renée’s anthology, Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness, was published in April, 2024. A prominent advocate for research at the intersection of arts, health, and neuroscience, as Artistic Advisor to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Renée launched the first ongoing collaboration between America’s national cultural center and its largest health research institute, the National Institutes of Health. She created her own program called Music and the Mind, which she has presented in more than 60 cities around the world. She is now a founding advisor for major initiatives in the field, including the Sound Health Network at UC San Francisco and the NeuroArts Blueprint with Johns Hopkins University and The Aspen Institute.
Advisor for Special Projects at LA Opera, Renée is also Co-Artistic Director of the Aspen Opera Center and VocalArts at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Renée’s other awards include Germany’s Cross of the Order of Merit, the Polar Music Prize, the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, and honorary doctorates from ten leading universities. www.reneefleming.com
American pianist Howard Watkins is a frequent associate of some of the world’s leading musicians on the concert stage and as an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. His appearances throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, Russia, and Israel have included collaborations with Joyce DiDonato, Diana Damrau, Thomas Hampson, Kathleen Battle, Grace Bumbry, Mariusz Kwiecien, Anna Netrebko, and Matthew Polenzani at such venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kennedy Center, the United States Supreme Court, Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Elbphilharmonie, and the Bolshoi Theater. His current and former faculty affiliations include The Juilliard School, the Bard College Conservatory of Music, the Merola Opera Program, the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program, the Yale School of Music as a Visiting Presidential Fellow, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival, the Mannes School of Music, the North Carolina School of the Arts, the International Vocal Arts Institute (Israel, Japan, and China), IIVA in Italy, the Brancaleoni Music Festival in Italy, the Tokyo International Vocal Arts Academy (TIVAA), and VOICExperience in Orlando, Tampa, and Savannah. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Mr. Watkins completed the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Accompanying and Chamber Music at the University of Michigan. Honored as the 2004 recipient of the Paul C. Boylan award from the University of Michigan for his outstanding contributions to the field of music, he is also the 2019 recipient of the Lift Every Voice Legacy Award from the National Opera Association.
Acknowledgements
This performance is sponsored by:
