By Albert Innaurato

Great singers often have an “annus mirabilis”—a year when everything comes together in dazzling fashion. As a result of the 1995-96 season, the American soprano Renée Fleming fits the pattern.

When she made her first entrance as Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello, which opened the Metropolitan Opera’s season, there was trepidation: She had given birth to her second daughter a scant five weeks earlier. Worry was pointless, however, for her ample voice had a creamy richness and a sweet voluptuousness. Her cry in the third act, “Ah! non son cio che esprime quella parola orrenda,” had more force than I’ve heard live in a quarter century.

The mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli stood through several of those performances. “The Desdemona was fantastic! The color of her voice is very special—caldo, hot in a way. Her voice is molto particolare, personale, unique!”

Some months later, with the Opera Orchestra of New York under Eve Queler in Rossini’s Armida at Carnegie Hall, Fleming’s gorgeous lower register lent a fiercer beauty to her singing. Her fiorature had velocity, precision, and elegance. The words were used for maximum color; her rhythm was thrusting, creative. And she capped the evening with a staggering high E-flat. One would have to go back to Joan Sutherland to hear such a combination of qualities on so grand a scale.

At James Levine’s 25th-anniversary Metropolitan Opera gala last May she managed “Depuis le jour” effortlessly on an endless breath, employing portamento daringly. Her pronunciation was beautiful in itself. Above all, she was sexual. So explicit was her projection of Louise’s ecstatic “. . . premier jour d’amour!” that puritan and politically correct alike blanched. For some time, misguided current practice has purged estrogen from the female throat, but Fleming is fighting the good fight.

Mid-season, Fleming was awarded the first Solti Prize by the conductor himself. Decca/London signed her to an exclusive recording contract, and opera companies scrambled to book her.

But in some ways her solo recital at Alice Tully Hall in New York was the most striking. In a wide range of songs, Fleming’s ability to mirror accompanimental harmonic changes in the vocal line were subtle and telling. In the chromatic Richard Strauss songs, for example, she fit her voice into the narrow grooves between notes without going sour or sharp, providing an incomparable musical complexity and richness. She inflected the harmony of several Poulenc songs with captivating elegance, avoiding any hint of pretentiousness or preciosity. In an age when too few famous singers can center any pitch securely, let alone play with micro pitches, Fleming is a phenomenon.

James Levine rarely goes on record about living singers, but he waxed ecstatic about Fleming when discussing their collaboration in the recent Sony release of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck and Lulu suites. “We first worked in Ghosts of Versailles. It was clear right away the voice was extraordinary. But she was also remarkably responsive. The voice is so beautiful, she loves music so much, and she is so sensitive to responsible suggestion. I asked her to do the Berg. They may not be roles for her in the house, but her sound in them is amazing. She is unique in her time . . . . I adore her!”

Maestro Levine and Peter G. Davis, the notoriously stringent music critic of New York magazine, rarely agree—except on Fleming. “I really didn’t like her much when I first heard her,” Davis remarks. “It was just another generic voice. Then at La Straniera with Eve Queler, the voice opened up like a flower. The Desdemona opening night this year was amazing. Hers has become the type of voice people at the Met just die for, from Caruso to Flagstad. Those were great, luscious sounds. I can’t think of another American soprano who has it in such quantity.” Fleming was born 37 years ago to music teachers who taught in the Rochester public school system. At 13, Fleming started to compose. On a surviving tape, the pop roots of her songs are clear enough, but her chords are ambitious (although she has some trouble modulating), and there is real melodic interest. And her girl-voice is resplendent. Best, though, is her “song sense,” that ability to get the heart into the throat. It is basic to great singing and gets rarer every season.

At SUNY Potsdam she worked for a Music Education degree and studied singing with Patricia Misslin. To combat a paralyzing shyness, she started singing jazz. Her partners were two outstanding musicians who have significant careers, pianist Larry Ham and drummer Eddie Ornowski. Ornowski remembers, “I was at the bar ordering a drink with my back to the band when I heard that incredibly clear voice—it stuck a dagger in my heart. What gassed us all at that time was how she could sing Verdi one minute, then blow us away with Cole Porter the next.”

Ham recalls, “In 1980 we arranged to bring up Illinois Jacquet. He’s one of the greatest tenor saxophonists in jazz, ever. He’d played with everybody, he toured with Ella for years. Renée sang for him. He was just floored. She sang Billie Holiday’s ‘You’ve Changed.’ He said ‘I’ve never heard a voice like that.’ He’s still talking about it!”

After getting a Masters from Rochester, she went to Juilliard, where she supported herself as a secretary. She interrupted her courtship with actor Richard Ross (whom she eventually married) to go to Germany on a Fulbright. There she was targeted by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Fleming shudders, “I came back to the States after that and everyone said, ‘What happened to your voice? We can’t hear you! ‘I had no top, I couldn’t sing soft, I had incredible tension. It took me a long while to come out of that. If I didn’t have a vocal problem, I took it on.”

She was rescued by Beverley Johnson and started going on the contest route. One of the few she won was the Richard Tucker Award in 1989. Those of us on the jury were astounded: The shimmering, abundant radiance of this voice bouncing all over New York’s 92nd Street Y was, well, paranormal. To hear her young and unsung was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It seemed to me then that hers was the most resplendent “blond” American voice since Eleanor Steber’s.

Possessed of an arresting presence, with a voluptuous physique, Fleming hones her stagecraft with her actor-husband. Her singing is organic, rooted in a complete technical mastery that allows for spontaneous abandon. It seems likely she can do anything in the lyric repertoire. For now she is concentrating on French roles, such as Louise, Thaïs, and Manon. An uneasy debut at La Scala (as Elvira in Don Giovanni) may well be forgotten when she returns there for Lucrezia Borgia in 1998. This past summer she made her Bayreuth debut, as Eva in Die Meistersinger. The Metropolitan Opera plans a Manon and Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah for her. This season she will sing Fiordiligi, Marguerite in Faust, and Russalka there.

“Normal” is the word everybody uses for Fleming the person, and there is a bit of a backlash, with the assumption that she is not driven or crazy enough for greatness. But others compare the unfolding of her career with those of Flagstad, Nilsson, Sutherland, and Sills. Fleming, like them, has kicked around, known serious crisis and great discouragement. All of which has made her profoundly self-aware and nearly perfect technically. She has had to be tough, disciplined, and resilient. And her talent is immense. If that is not enough—barring unforeseen bad luck—to make her the most promising soprano talent of the new millennium, then all hope for opera must finally be abandoned.

Albert Innaurato writes regularly for Opera News and has written about music and other arts for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, the Yale Review, and Opernwelt. The Metropolitan Opera Guild has taped his lectures about La Forza del destino, Billy Budd, La Fanciulla del West, and other operas. He has directed operas, coached singers, and written plays, the best known of which was the long-running Broadway hit Gemini.