A living legend takes the Moss Arts Center stage when Renée Fleming, one of the world’s most celebrated singers, performs an intimate evening concert featuring classical repertoire selections and time-honored works from the stage and screen on Saturday, Feb. 29, at 7:30 p.m.
The performance will be held in the center’s Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre, located within the Street and Davis Performance Hall at 190 Alumni Mall.
Fleming captivates audiences with her sumptuous voice, consummate artistry, and compelling stage presence. Known for bringing new audiences to classical music and opera, Fleming has sung not only with Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and Andrea Bocelli, but also with Elton John, Paul Simon, Sting, Josh Groban, and Joan Baez.
Accompanied by longtime collaborator Gerald Martin Moore on piano, Fleming will perform audience favorites, including selections from the opera “Wuthering Heights” and arias by Handel and Schubert, along with songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music” and the feature film “The Shape of Water.”
President Barack Obama awarded Fleming the National Medal of Arts, America’s highest honor for an individual artist, at a White House ceremony in 2013. After winning her fourth Grammy Award that same year for Best Classical Vocal Solo, she brought her voice to a vast new audience in 2014 as the first classical artist ever to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl.
In 2018, Decca released “Renée Fleming: Broadway,” an album of great musical theatre songs from the 1920s to the present day. In a rare double-header for a classical singer, Fleming was featured on the soundtracks of two Best Picture and Best Soundtrack nominees at the 2018 Academy awards — “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and “The Shape of Water,” which ultimately won both prizes, as well as the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Fleming was the singing voice of Roxane, played by Julianne Moore, in the film of Ann Patchett’s best-selling novel “Bel Canto” and she recently made her Broadway musical debut in a major revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel,” earning a Tony Award nomination. In 2017 she brought her acclaimed portrayal of the Marschallin in Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” to the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and the Metropolitan Opera. Her current recital and concert schedule spans the globe, including Barcelona, Vienna, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, London, Helsinki, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, Seoul, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.
This performance is supported in part by gifts from John W. Cox and Sally Schweitzer Cox, J. Michael Kelly and Candi M. Kelly, and Anne H. Moore and Ralph M. Byers.
During her visit to Blacksburg, Fleming will conduct a master class with students of voice in Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts on Feb. 28 from 4-5:30 p.m. in the Moss Arts Center’s Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre. The master class is free and open to the public; no ticket or registration is required.
Alongside Virginia Tech researchers, Fleming will participate in “Music and the Mind,” a presentation she created to explore the power of music as it relates to health and the brain. Topics will include childhood development, music therapy, and cognitive neuroscience. Since September 2017, Fleming has presented “Music and the Mind” in 14 cities around the country.
Tickets for the performance are $50-125 for the general public and $10 for students and youth 18 and under. Tickets can be purchased online; at the Moss Arts Center’s box office, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday; or by calling 540-231-5300 during box office hours.
