Double fantasy

The divas take a moment to relax on an earlier stop of their tour.

You know, some days I feel so lucky to be able to do this.  And one such day was last Sunday, when I was privileged to hear Renée Fleming and Susan Graham (above) warble to each other - and to a packed Symphony Hall - in a sold-out Celebrity Series concert.

For this proved a vocal match truly made in heaven - or at any rate close by.  Superstar soprano Fleming - familiar not only from the Met and TV, but also from her many appearances with the BSO - drew the big crowd, I suppose; but I'd say it was the warm (and witty) Graham who most completely won them over by the time the house lights rose.  Be that as it may, the two ladies seemed untroubled by any sense of competition, perhaps because they've been friends ever since they won the Met auditions some 25 years ago (and perhaps because vocally they're in such exquisite, mutually-supportive balance).  Indeed, their entwined voices seem to all but become one at times - only to soon delicately part ways again.  These ladies weren't just born to sing, they were born to sing together.

Fleming, of course, possesses one of the purest and most gorgeous sopranos on the planet, although her lower range isn't as powerfully supported as her top.  Graham's rich and dusky mezzo is, in contrast, far steadier across its range - indeed, she is an expert at the kind of superbly controlled vocal swell that seems to rise like a musical standing wave.

Both ladies looked fabulous, btw - first in black, then in dazzling shades of silver (Graham) and pink ruby (Fleming).  With her hair pulled back, and her gowns off the shoulder, Graham made a striking, statuesque amazon (and appropriately enough, given her successes in pants roles); Fleming, meanwhile, favored stoles and drapes that transformed her into a kind of opening flower.

That image was quite appropriate to the repertoire they'd chosen - most of it from the Parisian salons of the Belle Époque, where most every song was meant as a kind of bloom.  And the ladies had an intriguing case to make about this particular period of musical ferment - that the sopranos who first sang these songs had a key role in their very creation; they were not merely interpreters but actual muses - and not just in the salon but also the boudoir.  (!) Thus between numbers Graham and Fleming often extolled the crowd with anecdotes and back-stage war stories - and at the top of each half of the program, we got to listen to some delightfully salty reminiscences by the Scottish soprano Mary Garden, who sang for Debussy and Massenet.

Graham's hearty stage presence gave her patter a welcome shot of spice (sometimes delivered with a native Texan twang), while Fleming mostly played hostess; still, in general, the chit-chat came off well, although I sometimes wished they'd just sing some more instead.  For to be honest, almost every number was transporting.  The opening duets from Saint-Saëns were lively and exquisite, but then the Fauré that followed was so good that I began to feel a little faint. The long, gently devastating droop of "Puisqu’ici bas toute âme" may have actually been the highlight of the evening - although who could resist the trembling depth of "Pleurs d’or"?

There were surprises to be found here as well (who knew the melody of Fauré's familiar "Pavane" came with catty lyrics?), as much of the program proved fairly obscure - obscure but gorgeous, I should say.  And each lady shone in solo turns as well as duets.  Fleming seemed to glow with the limpid grace she's famous for in Debussy's brief, but heart-breaking "Beau soir," for instance - and then demonstrated she can sashay with the best of them in Delibes' jaunty "The girls of Cadiz."

When Graham took her solos - in a memorable silver sheath - she focused on the lesser-known songs of Reynaldo Hahn, a favorite of hers who was a possible lover of Proust (the program told us that, improbably, Hahn lived from 1847 to 1974 (!); his real dates are 1874 to 1947).  Let's just say that Graham more than made a case for Hahn - and revealed her own talent for implied romantic tragedy in the composer's subtly moving "Infidélité."

But wait, there was more, still more - a ravishing rendition of Offenbach's drifting "Barcarolle," more heartbreak courtesy of Berlioz (in "La mort d'Ophélie"), and a dream-team rendition of the "Flower Duet" from Lakmé.  As a kind of intermission, accompanist Bradley Moore also essayed the familiar "Clair de lune" with  a surprising level of architecture and attack; and as an encore, Graham turned to Piaf, accompanying herself on the piano through a take on "La Vie en rose" that was so confidently happy (she entered with a cigarette dangling from her lip, and all but gargled Piaf's guttural 'r's) yet so rich with real romantic feeling that I honestly think I will remember it for the rest of my life.  In fact, I have to admit - something shifted in my musical soul at that moment.  I'll adore Renée all my days - but now my heart belongs to Susan.

Of the sea, song, and sirens

In the old days, BSO programs aspired to some sort of intellectual coherence - most often, to pairings of the "compare and contrast" variety. These days, however, national origin seems to be enough to shape an evening around, as in this weekend's offering of "French music," featuring Berlioz, Duparc, Debussy, and a new commission from Henri Dutilleux, sung by reigning concert soprano Renée Fleming (at left).

The evening opened with an expertly gauged, if utterly conventional, reading of excerpts from the Berlioz "Roméo et Juliette;" though to be fair, James Levine coaxed some real feeling from the suite's "love scene," and the "Queen Mab scherzo" sometimes shivered with eerie, moonlit fantasy. Still, this seemed like an aperitif before the main course: Fleming.

The diva entered looking glorious in a sea-foam stole over a shimmering, fishtail sheath (someone must have told her La Mer was on the program), and she was generally in fine voice - although perhaps the warm opalescence of her pipes isn't precisely right for Dutilleux, whose precision might be better served by crystal than pearl. Fleming also seemed at times to be laying her own patented stamp on the music rather than responding to the Ligeti-esque textures around her. Still, there was reason for her to feel isolated; like many a mid-century composer - which is essentially what the nonagerian Dutilleux still is - the Frenchman hadn't so much supported her voice as built an environment for it to explore, and her soprano did retain a poignant vulnerability as it rose and fell through the exquisite, alienated soundscape the composer had constructed. Of the short vocal suite he supplied, perhaps the strongest was the opening piece, "L'Temps L'Horloge" (roughly "Time and the Clock"), which hauntingly evoked time itself rippling through the cogs and gears of its own measurement (with the woodwinds following suit), rather than slipping silently by us "like a thief in the night." Less compelling, at least on first hearing, was the burnt-offering setting of "Le Dernier Poeme," the famously minimal verse (by Robert Desnos) in which romantic despair meets the doom of the death camps. Dutilleux hit on an odd but intriguing instrumental choice for the piece: what sounded like a beaten-down accordion accompanied Fleming through her desolate admonition to the War's survivors; but perhaps the vocal line was slightly too spare to fully mine the pathos of the poem.

Fleming was more in her element in the ensuing group of songs by Duparc, achieving something like perfect synchronicity with Levine and the orchestra during the gorgeous "L'Invitation au Voyage," and the more muted rapture of "Extase." Even here, however, she sometimes sounded fragile, and her voice brushed at least once against the top of its register, perhaps leading to a rather constrained reading of "Phidylé," which might have brimmed with more passion.

This hardly mattered to her fans, however (several of whom departed the hall with her); they'd drunk at least intermittently from the golden spring of her voice, and left happy. Too bad they missed the best part of the program: Levine unexpectedly summoned up a brilliant performance of La Mer, which of course is putatively a portrait of the ocean over the course of a single day ("I particularly liked the bit at a quarter to eleven," Satie once quipped), but is actually - like so much of Debussy - a long meditation on submerged sensual pleasure. Sublimity of this type is a Levine specialty, of course, and he didn't stint on color, or spray - the performance's real pleasure, however, lay in its expertly contrived, but seemingly carefree, polyrhythms, which underpin whatever "structure" La Mer has. Here Levine caught precisely the play of tiny phrases over the deeper sway of the piece, and skillfully drew the orchestra from the rolling surge of dawn to the orgasmic thrash of a mid-day storm. There were perhaps no new soundings of Debussy's ocean here, but it was still exhilarating to hear the evening end with such a splendid splash.