Natural Awe and Angst in Concert at the Arlington

“America’s Diva” Renée Fleming Brought her Eco-Conscious “Voice of Nature” Recital/Visual Project to Santa Barbara Courtesy of UCSB Arts & Lectures

By Josef Woodard Thu Feb 08, 2024 | 11:36am

A touch of that “deja vu all over again” sensation — the good kind — descended upon the Arlington Theatre last week with the arrival of Great American soprano Renée Fleming. For one, there is the encouraging fact that we’ve seen, heard, and experienced Fleming’s gifts as a recitalist in town over the years. A Fleming concert encounter is always a feast on its own terms.

But from another angle, her recent appearance with piano accompanist Howard Watkins, in an audio-visual showcase of her eco-minded and Grammy-winning album Voices of Nature: the Anthropocene, inevitably triggered memories of another saved singer’s project just a year ago at the Granada. Back then, Joyce DiDonato — who performed in the Metropolitan Opera production of The Hours with Fleming — presented her own environmentalist project Seeds of Hope. Both of these inspired, late career, and still iconic divas are transcending complacent business as usual, and using both their art and eco/social consciences to create projects that matter beyond the gloriously-sung notes.

At the Arlington, the nature-minded awareness filled the room from the outset, with a seamless film segment showcasing oceanic scenes, to the tune of an arrangement of Jackson Browne’s “Before the Deluge” arranged by a consortium including Fleming, Rhiannon Giddens, and Caroline Shaw.

The “Voices of Nature” first half of Fleming’s recital was framed by Hazel Dickens’ “Pretty Bird” and Kevin Puts’ “Evening,” from The Hours. Along the way during her supremely well-intentioned project, some of us sensed a bit of discomfort with the interaction of sight and sound. The stunning nature photography felt somehow overly glamorized and colorized, as impressed with itself as it was aimed at the natural awe and angst before our eyes. The fact that the film element took place in the Arlington, with its own faux night sky, didn’t help the sense of detachment.

And yet Fleming’s creatively stitched program of variously nature-ized songs commanded its own sharp sense of mission and purpose. She dipped into classical antiquity for a slice of Handel (a composer also represented in DiDonato’s program), but mostly focused on work by living composers — artists living within the current fragile state of the planet. Included in the range of songwriters were art pop pioneer Björk, jazz sensation Maria Schneider, and new music composer of note Nico Muhly, whose “Endless Space” reflected on the simultaneity of human experience on Earth: “it’s always half day and half night … your midnight is someone else’s noon.”

After intermission, Fleming got down to more recital business-like business, with a collection of art songs by Fauré and Grieg, an aria (Puccini’s chestnut “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi), the joking, self-effacing satire of Andrew Lippa’s “The Diva,” and a snippet of classic Broadway, with “All the Things You Are.”

Fleming, still a masterful vocal sensation equipped with bravura, moment-by-moment sensitivity, and precision, is so many things — now including an artist placing energy, emphasis, and influence on our planet. If, at times, the show could have done with less show and allowed the music/poetry to speak for itself, the evening was a bold spur to emotional consolation and planetary conscience.