This album is very controversial among fans but that's inevitable. Whenever a major artist records an album outside the style that made them famous, some fans get upset. It happened in the sixties when Ray Charles recorded R+B versions of country songs and again in the seventies when Willie Nelson recorded his Stardust collection of songs from the Great American Songbook. Many other exaples could be cited. Now we have Renée Fleming, one of the world's leading opera singers, singing songs from a variety of sources backed only by a piano and a guitar - often only one of them - and using her natural voice instead of her operatic voice. Renée provides extensive liner notes in which she explains that she originally started out as a jazz singer and that she expected to make a career in jazz until events conspired to take her career in a classical direction. So now she provides a glimpse of what might have been.
The songs are all mellow though the tempo picks up a little occasionally, most notably on My Cherie amour (a strange choice for a lady to sing but Renée sings this Stevie Wonder song well) so I can understand why some fans may find the album monotonous, but I don't. The songs come from a variety of sources including Jimmy Webb (famous as Glen Campbell's songwriter but here represented by The moon's a harsh mistress), the Beatles (an incredible version of In my life), Joni Mithchell (River) and Billie Holliday (You've changed). Answer me was originally recorded by Frankie Laine, since whwn this song also became a UK hit for Barbara Dickson in the seventies, but neither Frankie nor Barbara did the song the way Renée does - as a slow torch song). My favorite, however, is the traditional folk song by Stephen Foster (Hard times come again no more) that Renée sings backed just by a guitar, which closes the album. A few classical pieces are included but given the piano/guitar treatment. If anything, they sound a little out of place but Renée knows that this album will sell to poeople who don't normally buy her music (I am one such person) so their inclusion is understandable. In any case, if Katherine Jenkins can give a Dolly Parton song the full operatic treatment (in Italian, too) as she did on her 2005 release, why shouldn't Renée sing a classical piece backed just by a guitar and a piano?
This album won't suit everybody, but fans of torch singers such as Jeri Southern, June Christy and Julie London may wish to consider this album. Opera fans should give this a miss unless they have wider musical tastes.
Amazon.com's editorial suggests that Renée sent a curveball to her fans with this album. Judging by the other Amazon.com reviews, it seems to have curved away from many of those fans and given me (not hitherto a Renée fan) a direct hit. Thank you, Renée, for coming into my musical world (however briefly) with such a lovely album. Your reward is that I will venture into your musical world more frequently in future.
