Renee and Bryn: Under the Stars
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Composer: Renee FlemingComposer: Bryn Terfel
Composer: Stephen Sondheim
Composer: Rupert Holmes
Composer: John Harold Kander
Composer: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Composer: Claude-Michel Schoenberg
Composer: Richard Rodgers
Composer: Gerard Presgurvic
Composer: Jason Robert Brown
Composer: Meredith Willson
Performer: Lucy Simon
Performer: Cole Porter
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2003-02-11
Music Label: Decca
Product features:
- FLEMING RENEE / TERFEL BRYN UNDER THE STARS
- Not While I'm Around
- Moonfall
- I Don't Remember You/Sometimes A Day Goes By
- "All the Love I Have" (from The Beautiful Game by Ben Elton & Andrew Lloyd Webber)
- I Wish I Could Forget You/Loving You
- Stars
- All I Ask Of You
- Hello, Young Lovers
- Pretty Women
- Aimer
- All The Wasted Time
- Seventy-Six Trombones
- How Could I Ever Know?
- So In Love
- Wheels Of A Dream
Music reviews of Renee and Bryn: Under the Stars
Music Review: Two of the great operatic voices of today sing Broadway
Rating: 4 Stars
Bryn Terfel and Renee Fleming have two of the best voices in classical music, and clearly they bring an incomparable luster, richness, and sense of melodic beauty to these Broadway songs.
The main problems on this CD are that they are divorced from their original contexts within the shows, having more pop-sounding orchestrations. Hence, the duet of "All I Ask of You" is no longer between Christine Daae and her handsome suitor Raul in "Phantom of the Opera" but becomes a generic love duet, and one misses Sarah Brightman's genuinely "smaller," more delicate, ingenue-sounding interpretation.
Or "Not While I'm Around," the duet between Mrs. Lovett and Toby from "Sweeney Todd," loses its dramatic meaning and irony, even though astonishingly beautiful (and incomparably more so than the Patti Lupone or Angela Lansbury's renditions). And I'm sure it knocks the socks off the sung version to hit the movie theaters, with non-singers Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter in the leads).
"Pretty Women" also from "Sweeney Todd"(cf. the DVD of the George Hearn/Patty Lupone/S.F. Symphony) is a duet between Sweeney Todd and Judge Turpin, not a solo--and it's context is that of the actual meeting between the two while the former is about to give the latter "the closest shave he'll have ever had," just before he slits the judge's throat. In the single lit area of the stage, its melodious rapturous parallel singing between the two is the counterpart to the murder, the apex of the duet.
Or the heart-aching, lovely "How Could I Ever Know?" from "Secret Garden," a conventional love duet here. In the show, Uncle Archibald's dead wife Lily has come back to comfort him, bitter and unable to open himself up to his own daughter, and Fleming sings beautifully--but the dramatic meaning of the words she sings is missing.
On the other hand, the singing of Rene Fleming of "Moonfall" with its richness, beauty, and subtlety does not require a dramatic context, its lyricism being sufficient.
Terfel is more in his natural element than Fleming and his singing of "I Don't Remember You/A Day Goes By" is sturdy, natural, and very moving. And of course, his "Stars" sends the listener "up to the skies," as the actor/singer who plays Javert in "Les Miserables" does on the stage.
Fleming's somewhat or especially mannered approach (she sometimes speaks in a very arch, "knowing" manner worthy of Barbra Streisand--at her most self-indulgent--what would have been a sung line in the show) backfires about half the time ("So in Love" or "All I Ask of You").
On the other hand, when she "lets go," as in "All the Wasted Time," or "Wheels of a Dream," it actually "works," with great dramatic power.
Stunningly designed, glossy brochure with lyrics of all the songs included.
In any case, I know of very few Broadway cast albums where the actor-singers bring the full-bodied, "360 degree" musical bravura of the two artists on this CD. Broadway would be very fortunate to have these voices grace anything...especially in this day of miked voice amplification.
Description of Renee and Bryn: Under the Stars
FLEMING RENEE / TERFEL BRYN UNDER THE STARSIn these days of the crossover, it is hardly surprising to find two great opera singers making a foray into numbers from Broadway musicals by such composers as Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. What's remarkable is that they seem completely at home in this music. Both say they grew up listening to it, and indeed they approach these songs with no less care and seriousness than they'd give the most demanding operatic arias, and without a trace of condescension. However, their vocal, expressive, and interpretive styles are very different, both in the solos and the duets. Terfel projects assertive manliness, tender, intimate affection, and rollicking humor without external effects, using only his incomparably sonorous voice and powerful personality. His diction is impeccably clear, and though he has sometimes let his theatrical flair spill over into Schubert songs, he is the soul of simplicity here. This is in stark contrast to Fleming's tendency to exaggerate colors and dynamics and to turn sentiment into sentimentality. Moreover, though she claims a background as a jazz singer, her "crooning" sounds artificial and unnatural. However, her top notes, culminating in a triumphant high C at the end of the final number, ring gloriously. Her voice glows and shimmers with irresistible luster, soaring from seductive whispers to thrilling climaxes. The program features a great variety of love songs, and includes an antiwar protest (from Beautiful Game), a celebration of the American dream (from Ragtime), and a rousing fun piece (from The Music Man). Unfortunately, even the best songs are marred by thoroughly corny arrangements. Listeners will find their own favorites, but the real "stars" on this record are the two singers. --Edith Eisler
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