This is a happily chosen Strauss showcase for Fleming, issued here suitably enough to coincide with the soprano's appearance as the Marschallin at Covent Garden in March. There she will have beside her as here, Susan Graham, as her Octavian. Fleming's creamy, full-toned, vibrant voice is about the ideal instrument not only for the Marschallin but also for the other parts she attempts here. She has mastered at once the phraseology and verbal inflexions needed for all three roles, and imparts to them a quick intelligence to second the vocal glories. Sometimes her performance as the Marschallin or Countess Madeleine recall, almost uncannily, those of Schwarzkopf, leaving one in no doubt that she has studied the readings of her distinguished predecessor. If Schwarzkopf with a slightly slimmer tone has the finer line and quicker responses, her successor provides the richer tone. Fleming need fear no comparisons with more recent interpreters such as Te Kanawa, Tomowa-Sintow and, as Madeleine only, Janowitz. Indeed, Fleming's account of the closing scene of Capriccio is just about ideal, and it's good to hear the veteran Walter Berry as the Haushofmeister.
In the Act 1 duets from Rosenkavalier, Graham makes an ardent suitor, but her timbre is so similar to Fleming's that it's hard to tell them apart, though she is not as verbally acute as her partner. Bonney joins them for a finely balanced account of the famous trio. In the Act 1 duet from Arabella, Bonney and Fleming engage nicely on the subject of the right man. My only serious reservation concerns Eschenbach, whose tempos, especially in the Rosenkavalier Act 3 extracts, are stodgy. He makes even the Vienna Philharmonic sound, at times, earthbound, though most of the individual playing reaches the standard expected, especially the horn in Capriccio. The recording has the singers properly front-stage. I hope this disc will not preclude Decca - self-styled the 'Opera Company' - from giving us a couple of complete Strauss operas with Fleming. Die Liebe der Danae (with Terfel as Jupiter?) would be ideal for starters.
Alan Blyth
... another view
Fleming must be the owner of the peachiest lyric soprano before the public today: the ripe, juicy tone of the middle of her voice is supported by a chest register of ductile resonance and she can soar ecstatically into the stratosphere, floating pianissimo high notes of exquisite rotundity and sweetness. In short, she has the Strauss soprano par excellence of today and this new album devoted to three leading Strauss ladies - 'heroines' the Marschallin, Arabella and Countess Madeleine assuredly are not - will be eagerly awaited by anyone fortunate enough to have encountered one of them in the theatre.
She first sang the Marschallin at the Houston Grand Opera in 1995 - conducted, as here, by Christoph Eschenbach - and Arabella three years later with the same company and conductor. Although she has yet to take the Countess of Capriccio into her stage repertoire, she has sung the closing scene (again with Eschenbach) in concert and her singing here certainly whets the appetite for a complete performance and/or recording.
Decca has taken exceptional pains to present Fleming's Marschallin, Arabella and Madeleine in an appropriately luxurious context and, as well as her preferred Strauss conductor - they recorded the Four Last Songs together for RCA (3/97) - she is given the lush underlay of the Vienna Philharmonic, still one of the great Strauss orchestras. Her deluxe team of co-stars includes Susan Graham - her Octavian in Paris, at Covent Garden (which opens on March 14), at the Metropolitan Opera and San Francisco - and Barbara Bonney, here finally permitted to commit an extract, tantalisingly brief though it is, of her enchanting Sophie, the best since the glory days of Lucia Popp; she also joins Fleming in the Arabella-Zdenka duet. Even the cameo appearances of a lackey at the close of Act 1 of Der Rosenkavalier, of Faninal after the Act 3 trio, and the major-domo in the closing scene from Capriccio, are filled by the veteran Walter Berry. Even in his seventies he is instantly recognisable as the Ochs in Leonard Bernstein's ultra-Viennese recording of Der Rosenkavalier in 1971.
When I saw Fleming in the Opera-Bastille's Rosenkavalier in December 1997, I felt she had some way to go before she could claim a place in the role-call of great interpreters of the Marschallin, but she has evidently worked hard on the text - every word is cleanly and meaningfully enunciated even if her German is not wholly idiomatic - and on her interpretation. Even in the extracts recorded here - the Marschallin's monologue and the duet with Octavian to the end of Act 1, the trio, the Sophie-Octavian duet to the end of Act 3 - she paints a portrait of a generous-hearted, passionate and sensual spirit, mature but not matronly. The rosy warmth of her soprano suggests a woman in her prime, romantic but realistic as she watches time slipping away. She sings the line about getting up in the middle of the night to stop the clocks with heart-stopping Innigkeit. A lovely moment.
Graham, too, sounds a picture of vocal health, velvet-toned, yet effortless at the soprano end of Octavian's range. And these two lovely singers blend effortlessly with Bonney's silvery soubrette in one of the most sumptuous of recorded trios.
Really, with a cast like this, one craves the whole opera, or at the very least extended extracts as in an earlier Decca recording with Regine Crespin and Elisabeth Soderstrom (10/97). But, presumably, the financial odds are against a new complete Rosenkavalier. It's hard luck on Fleming, too, that the company she records for 'exclusively' has relatively recent recordings of both Arabella and Capriccio with Kiri Te Kanawa in the starring roles. Fleming's soprano is not dissimilar in timbre to Te Kanawa's - the American's vibrato is more generous and she uses a wider palette of colour - but she is a far more musical and intelligent singer, a disadvantage in Arabella, perhaps, but certainly not in Capriccio.
Fleming's glorious, full-throated and richly detailed account of the monologue - rapturous in her climactic outburst 'O Madeleine, Madeleine! Willst du zwischen zwei Feuer brennen?' ('O Madeleine! Do you want to be consumed by two fires?') - crowns this beautiful disc as it crowns Strauss's life-long love affair with the soprano voice. Strauss would surely have found Renee Fleming's soprano as hard to resist as I do. Under Eschenbach, the VPO plays one of its favourite composers immaculately - the horn solo in the Moonlight music is pure magic - and the sound quality is outstandingly life-like, a typically first-class Michael Haas production. A treat for Straussians.'