Renée Fleming sings a superb Knoxville: Summer of 1915 RARE LIVE (1993)

For non commercial educational purposes.

Aspen Festival, Lawrence Foster, conductor, Aug. 21, 1993

This legendary live performance of Barber's nostalgic masterpiece "Knoxville: Summer of 1915"was the highlight of the Aspen festival in 1993. The piece has been a staple of Fleming's career since this, her first performance of it. The voice is in pristine condition, coming from the same summer that she sang her groundbreaking first Armidas at Pesaro. From the most passionate outbursts to the floating pianissimo reveries, few have sung it with such superb technical mastery, ravishing legato, depth of timbre and beauty of tone. Like the piece, the performance becomes more passionate and intensely personal as it proceeds. The last half particularly is vintage Fleming.

In 2016, 23 years later, she recorded the piece in the studio, a fine reading, which (for obvious reasons) doesn't quite match the vocal glamour of this live recording.

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