Decca Classics is proud to announce Renée Fleming – Greatest Moments at the Met. The release showcases her stellar career at the Metropolitan Opera House to date, making some of the great soprano’s most iconic performances at The Met available on CD and digital audio for the first time ever. Hearing these live performances captures the excitement felt in the house as they were happening in real time, making an indispensable addition to her many studio recordings.
This announcement follows news of Fleming’s nomination last week for a 2023 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, for her previous Decca release Voice of Nature: the Anthropocene, and it comes as Fleming takes the stage at the Met again tonight (November 22) in the star-studded world premiere production of Kevin Puts’s opera The Hours.
Fleming describes The Met as “my musical home, the theater where I feel welcome amongst friends – backstage, onstage, and in the audience.” The beginning of Fleming’s Met career is famous: in 1991 she stepped in at the last minute as the Countess in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, her surprise debut receiving instant acclaim. It launched a remarkable artistic relationship, with Fleming singing beloved operas from the standard repertoire, as well as championing operas never before heard at the house. She has sung more than 250 performances there, more than at any other opera house in the world, and the tally continues to grow.
Fleming regards singing the Met as the peak of operatic performance, saying,
“The Met is vast, but when you’re singing there, and there’s absolute silence, and you’re in a flow state, it is one of the most magical experiences you can have as a performer. It’s the pinnacle, just the pinnacle of all opera houses.”
Produced by GRAMMY-winning producer David Frost, the double CD set begins, of course, with Figaro (from an early 1991 recording). The tracklist continues in chronological order of her roles at the house, allowing listeners to experience the development of Fleming as an artist over three decades, featuring music from 19 productions and gala concerts, and featuring duets with the likes of Cecilia Bartoli, Susan Graham, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Samuel Ramey and Bryn Terfel.
Tonight, Renée Fleming makes her highly anticipated return to the Met in Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Kevin Puts’s The Hours, adapted from Michael Cunningham’s acclaimed novel. The premiere radiates with star power with Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato joining Fleming as the opera’s trio of heroines. Phelim McDermott directs this compelling drama, with Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium to conduct Puts’s poignant and powerful score.
Renée Fleming – Greatest Moments at the Met comes with liner notes featuring Fleming in conversation with Mary Jo Heath, Radio Host at the Met for fifteen seasons, telling the behind-the-scenes stories of these famous performances.