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Renée Fleming's forthcoming new recital CD is titled Bel Canto, which translates literally as "beautiful singing." It certainly lives up to its title, not only because it showcases the music of the 19th-century bel canto school of composers - Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini - but also because it aptly describes the American soprano's own radiant voice. In stores on August 27, Bel Canto is among the season's most hotly anticipated recordings, for it finds the singer returning to the roles which first inspired her to become a singer: scenes and arias from Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia and Maria Padilla, Rossini's Armida and Semiramide and Bellini's La Sonnambula and Il Pirata.

In many ways Bel Canto is a vast departure from her usual vocal territory. Previous releases, such as the 1999 Grammy Award-winning The Beautiful Voice focused on songs and arias from the later 19th century and early 20th centuries, including Rachmaninoff, Puccini and Strauss. Still, Fleming has clearly done her homework here, using new critical editions of the scores, and she is given sympathetic support by the Orchestra of St. Luke's, conducted by Patrick Summers, music director of the Houston Grand Opera. What's more, with none of the carefully wrought orchestral effects or complex harmonies of later repertory to support her, Fleming's voice can be truly savored on its own terms. For but two examples, listen to the lightness and suavity and she captures in the highly ornamented "Ah! non giunge” from La sonnambula, or the sheer visceral power she brings to the final scene of Il Pirata.

Bel Canto arrives with another "hook." By a remarkable coincidence, Fleming's work on the album coincided with the publication of a new novel by Tennessee-based writer Ann Patchett, also called Bel Canto (HarperCollins). Though Patchett and Fleming had never met, it was later revealed that Fleming's voice served as the inspiration for the story's heroine, American opera diva Roxanne Coss. The novel, about a hostage crisis in Peru, explores the uncommon ties that bind hostages of Japanese descent to their Spanish-speaking captors.

On Friday's Soundcheck, Patchett speaks with host John Schaefer about how, in the course of writing the novel, she listened to a lot of opera, including numerous recordings of Fleming's.

As for Bel Canto, the CD, its release is timed to coincide with Fleming's concert and staged productions of Bellini's Il pirata in Paris and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (October 21 - November 14 and February 5 - 8).

Stay tuned for selections from Bel Canto this fall on WNYC.

Related Links:
Read about Fans of Renée Fleming on an archival edition of Studio 360 (Show #301).
Renée Fleming Web site