Photograph by David Shankbone
The arias from La Boheme (Puccini's and then, mischievously, Leoncavallo's), a pure-fun "I Feel Pretty" Maestro David Robertson teasingly joined in on...Renée Fleming's first appearance with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra was as delightful as everyone in the audience expected it to be. The man stooped over his walker at almost 180 degrees, fighting with every step to be there. The young Asian musicians in the cheap seats, leaning forward. The guy behind us who yelled "Yessssssss" when Miss Fleming announced a Richard Strauss aria as one of the many encores she fed the greedy crowd, ovation after ovation.
Yet the moment that held me was when she sang--another encore--Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." She'd casually invited anyone who liked to join in--presumably in that chorus that's a quietly tender, frankly erotic re-take on Handel's. But halfway through, a baritone voice soared out from the upper balcony, resonant and strong, and joined her word for word. It was the kind of moment Robertson's made possible, after years here, with his amused ease and refusal to stick to rigid convention. People go to Powell Hall and relax now. And by relaxing, they become part of the music.
