America's soprano Renee Fleming opens Minnesota Orchestra season

The Minnesota Orchestra will open its new season on Friday with an operatic superstar who aims to redefine what it means to be an American singer.

In Renee Fleming, the orchestra has selected a four-time Grammy Award winner who has performed at the world's great opera houses. She counts among her fans President Barack Obama, who is said to have her music on his iPod.

Fleming sang to the largest crowd of her career in February when she took the stage at the Super Bowl and sang the national anthem to a global audience.

The crowd at the gala opening in Minneapolis will be minuscule in comparison, but given the circumstances, Fleming is honored to have been asked to sing at Orchestra Hall. She is well aware of the significance of the concert, which returns the orchestra to its first full season after a disastrous 16-month contract dispute, during which management locked out musicians from the hall.

"I know it's an emotional event and I know it's certainly something we've all hoped for," Fleming said.

Indeed, Fleming and others in the classical community outside the Twin Cities watched in horror as the Minnesota Orchestra dragged its way through two miserable years.

The concert likely will be emotional because for many the "Starry Starry Night Gala" will be the true re-launch of the orchestra after the bitter dispute that resulted in the departure of former president Michael Henson, whose handling of the dispute was contentious.

Fleming said the larger classical community learned from the Minnesota dispute.

"In the future, I think at least for a while, when people think about the trials of Minneapolis they will say, 'Well actually we probably should try and compromise and reach some sort of agreement,'" she said.

Now that that difficult period is behind the orchestra, the attention Friday returns to the stage and the program, which Fleming selected to showcase the orchestra and director Osmo Vänskä. The concert, which will be broadcast live on Classical Minnesota Public Radio's stations, will include a range of work for which she is known.

Besides pieces by Puccini, Zandonai and Bernstein, Fleming will sing "The Strand Settings," a work commissioned for her last year by Swedish composer Anders Hillborg. Fleming, a strong advocate of new music, describes the piece as very modern sounding but accessible and atmospheric.

"He creates kind of a soundscape," she said of Hillborg. "And the poetry is really enormously evocative. There is an enormous sensuality to his writing."

Fleming whose repertoire also includes covers of songs by Jefferson Airplane, Tears for Fears and Arcade Fire, hopes to redefine singing, "not just in language and style, but in genre."

"That's been enormously satisfying to me," she said.

Fleming's efforts have surprised even her. The experience of singing the "Star Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl, for example, was a far cry from the controlled atmosphere of an opera house.

"We can't prepare for singing in a stadium, we don't do that," she said. "The sound, the echo, the noise, the roar of the audience, all of that, the Blackhawk helicopters — I mean, it's all surreal in a way."

As the first classical singer to perform at football's biggest game, Fleming felt a lot of pressure — and she was amazed at the response. In letters from across the nation, people told her what the song means to them. She thinks it also served to raise the profile of classical musicians for a new audience.

"You know, I do think around the country people will reach out to us more, and [are] comfortable as a result of how that went," she said.

In an age where even presidents listen to divas on iPods, Fleming believes that's no bad thing.

This story originally published on MPR News on Tuesday, Sept. 2.

Listen to the live broadcast of the Minnesota Orchestra with Renée Fleming on Friday, Sept. 5, at 8 p.m., on all Classical MPR stations.

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