Renée Fleming’s Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene
Tulsa Performing Arts Center
May 10, 2025
American soprano Renée Fleming is the soprano of our time. She has sung all over the world, in all the roles, on all the stages. She’s performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at halftime shows. Her voice blesses the soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Even if you’re not an opera buff, you’ve probably heard her. She most recently made headlines for resigning from her role as Artistic Advisor at Large at the Kennedy Center, along with several other luminaries, when Trump fired the board and made himself chair. I’ve always respected her, but after that, I’d take a bullet for her.
Still, had I bought tickets for her Tulsa debut? No. As much as I enjoy the occasional opera, I don’t really like classical singing in concert. I find it embarrassing. Vocalists’ bodies are their instruments, and they tend to carry themselves with a bearing that I find brazen—tits up, haughty eyes, lifted chin, elbows bent to frame their torsos. All that frontal exposure and blatant emoting makes me uncomfortable. I realize I am stereotyping here, but those tickets weren’t cheap; I preferred to wait for some gritty instrumental sounds.
Then a friend who’d won raffle tickets for Fleming’s concert called and offered them to me. I took them, despite her saying that the seats were for the front row. I prefer something further back and higher up, where the acoustics blend better and the singers are thumb-sized. On arrival, I saw that our “front row” seats were actually row four, behind the VIP swells, which made me feel better. I wouldn’t have to watch the cellists’ socks or Fleming's sensible heels, if that’s what she’d be wearing.
The program noted that the first half of the evening would be a project Fleming conceived during Covid, when she dealt with the existential dread by being outdoors as much as possible—hiking, gardening, walking. She put together a program of songs that represented her appreciation of nature, got National Geographic to provide some visuals, and came up with a multimedia offering called Voices of Nature: The Anthropocene. The second half of the concert would feature opera standards, a couple of orchestral pieces, and some Broadway tunes. I figured I could handle it.
Then Fleming came onstage, and my prejudices evaporated. She was gorgeous and gracious, in a stunning gown of shimmery blue-ish purple-ish silver that gave her small frame the gravity it needed in such a big hall. She told us about The Anthropocene, then she sang the whole program to us, sometimes with a mic and sometimes without, depending on the song. Lovely footage of nature—with some truly horrifying scenes of what can go wrong when we don’t take care of it—played on a big screen over the orchestra while she sang Handel and Bjork and Villa-Lobos and others. I mainly watched the film and only looked at Fleming occasionally, but when I did she looked like she was singing me a story: no over-emoting or haughtiness here, and thus no cringe. I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty sure she made eye contact with me and sent me a little special smile.
After intermission, Fleming changed into a daring, coppery outfit and sang us Puccini’s O mio babbino caro, and I might have shed a small tear, hearing such a classic from a world-class throat. She gave a moving rendition of John Kander’s touching “A Letter from Sullivan Ballou,” whose text is a real letter written from a Civil War soldier to his wife, and several Broadway numbers that felt familiar and relaxed. She invited us to sing along on “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” then gave us “I Could Have Danced All Night” as an encore and, even more surprising, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” I didn’t know I needed to hear an opera singer do “Hallelujah,” but I did. She didn’t warble it—she just sang it, warm and easy.
The Tulsa Opera Orchestra provided spotless accompaniment to the singing, with conductor Robert Moody clearly thrilled to be breathing the same air as Fleming. The only weak spots in the show were the purely orchestral numbers—fairly technically accurate, but a little thin. I thought the percussion was a bit off on some Strauss oom-pah-pahs: the second pah was noticeably late, which is stylistically correct for a waltz versus a mazurka, but the execution was weird. Ditto for “Begin the Beguine”—I got a little worried about the percussion in all that syncopation, which felt a little loosey-goosey. Still, those numbers were pleasant to listen to while Fleming took a break.
Overcoming my cringe and delivering a hugely hopeful night of music, Fleming left me with a renewed appreciation for the planet we live on and the humans I share it with, and a sense of the confidence I still have in our potential. Her welcoming presence, her song choices, and the visual imagery all communicated the sort of kindness and care and love that will get us through. If an opera singer is capable of that, we are too.
