Soprano Renée Fleming explores climate change in Boston performance

Jeremy Siegel: You're listening to GBH's Morning Edition. One of the most celebrated musical voices of our time is coming to Boston this weekend. Soprano Renée Fleming will be singing alongside pianist Inon Barnatan at Symphony Hall on Sunday. And I had a chance to speak with her ahead of this performance. So your career is so storied, performing with operas around the world, crossing genre boundaries, performing with artists like Lou Reed, John Prine. And breaking barriers, too: the first classical artist to sing The Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl, performing for the Queen of England, at President Obama's inaugural celebration. Where did it all begin for you? What made you fall in love with music?

Renée Fleming: You know, it's interesting. I was a very shy child. I was also really into books. And because my parents were both high school music teachers at the time when I was growing up, I also was steeped in music. I remember listening to LPs and just being obsessed with [Sergei] Prokofiev's Peter and The Wolf, for instance, and playing it over and over and over again. And it was really one step ahead of the other. It's not like I decided at a young age, I want to be an opera star. You know, that was not in my realm of possibility at that time.

Siegel: It's amazing to think that you weren't thinking that then, because your name at this point is so synonymous with opera, with having an incredible voice unlike anything else. It makes me curious: What was the process like of finding your voice, or was it always there in some way?

Fleming: Well, it's interesting because it really wasn't. When I hear recordings of myself in my early 20s, there are a couple, I always say I sounded like an insect. You know, buzzing. It was not a particularly attractive sound at the time. You know, my teacher said, 'you're a wonderful musician. And so you might have a career because of your musicianship, but not your voice.' And then sort of in my late 20s, I would say it started to really develop. Now, when I listen back to that period and I think, yeah, yeah, it was always there. It just took a while for people to give me a chance.

Siegel: So when you're in Boston, you will be performing a program from the Grammy-winning album Voice of Nature, which explores our relationship with nature and how it's changing in the face of climate change. How do you translate a topic, a problem as huge as climate change, into music and into singing?

Fleming: Well, I juxtaposed two worlds. One was the world of traditional song literature from the late 19th century, early 20th century, which is much of the most beautiful repertoire that we know and love. And all of the poets at that time, whether it was [Paul] Verlaine or [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe, were framing human existence through the lens of nature. And so I thought, let's do some of this repertoire, and then let's also commission new work and allow composers to explore our relationship to nature now, which is not as positive. We're hoping that we can rectify that. There certainly is a tremendous, I would say, awareness now, and a goodwill. It's just managing to get it done.

Siegel: Well, listening to the pieces in this album, it might be just the beauty of your voice, but you almost come away from listening to it optimistic. Are you hopeful about the future of the world with climate change? Are you optimistic?

Fleming: Well, we have to have optimism. We have to be hopeful in order to feel that we can achieve what we need to achieve. And I believe that artists can change hearts and minds, and we do. And there's a lot going on that's positive. We just need to do more.

Siegel: That was singer Renée Fleming, who performs on Sunday at five at Symphony Hall, alongside pianist Inon Barnatan, in a program presented by Celebrity Series of Boston. You're listening to GBH's Morning Edition.