About the Album
This program is an inviting cross section of American opera of the last 50 years. Composers include Carlisle Floyd, Douglas Moore, Samuel Barber, and Gian Carlo Menotti, whose childlike "Monica's Waltz" from the otherwise lurid opera The Medium is a highlight. Old favorites are here, such as Gershwin's "Summertime." And new favorites, too: Andre Previn's forthcoming "A Streetcar Named Desire" graciously offers Straussian lushness and bitonal wind-instrument details suggesting Blanche DuBois's mind departing from reality, all sounding remarkably true to Previn's pre-World War II upbringing in Berlin.
...Fleming's rich middle register and an upper range where Blanche's dreamy lyrical musings can take wing, and do. Her high pianissimos, floating in the jasmine-scented air of her lyrical showpieces “I want magic!” and “I can smell the sea air,” held the audience at rapt attention.
Chicago Tribune
Track List
- Herrmann: Wuthering Heights - "I have dreamt" 2:54
- Moore: The Ballad of Baby Doe - The Letter Song 3:40
- Menotti: The Medium - Monica's Waltz 5:42
- Gershwin: Porgy and Bess / Act 1 - "Summertime" 4:18
- Gershwin: Porgy and Bess / Act 1 - "My man's gone now" 4:12
- Bernstein: Candide - "Glitter and be gay" 6:02
- Floyd: Susannah / Act 1 - "Ain't it a pretty night?" 6:00
- Floyd: Susannah / Act 2 - "The trees on the mountain" 5:30
- Stravinsky: The Rake's Progress / Act 1/Scene 3 - "No word from Tom" 8:38
- Barber: Vanessa - opera in 4 Acts / Act 1 - "He has come...do not utter a word, Anatol" 6:49
- Previn: A Streetcar named desire - "I want magic" 4:16
Recording info
Release Date: September 15, 1998
Label: Decca
CD / Download: 1
ASIN: B00000AFR4