Due to overwhelming response, there are 10 tickets of box seats with restricted view ($250 for each ticket) available for sale at the box office of Hong Kong Cultural Centre from 10am on the day of the concert. Each person can purchase a maximum of two tickets per transaction on a first-come-first-served basis.
‘Renée Fleming, possessor of the most sheerly beautiful soprano voice on the planet.’ The Telegraph
Known affectionately as 'the people’s diva', American soprano Renée Fleming captivates audiences with her sumptuous voice and compelling stage presence. Famous for stellar performances in operas of Mozart, Richard Strauss, Verdi and many others, she is also a noted interpreter of lieder and songs, with regular concert and recital tours around the world.
Fleming has received numerous honours and performed for a variety of prestigious occasions. In 2013 she was awarded the National Medal of Arts, America’s highest civil honour for artists, by President Obama; and she went on to sing the United States national anthem at the Super Bowl, the first ever classical artist to do so. She sang for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for her Diamond Jubilee on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, a historic first, and at the 25th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Fleming is a four-time Grammy Award winner with a wide-ranging discography.
Fleming’s Hong Kong recital will feature beloved songs and arias from the French and Italian repertoire, a selection of the most beautiful lieder by Brahms, and songs from the American musical theatre. Do not miss the chance to hear Fleming live on the Hong Kong stage!
Massenet
C’est Thaïs, l’idole fragile (from Thaïs)
Fauré
Mandoline
Saint-Saëns
Soirée en mer
Delibes
Les filles de Cadix
Brahms
Ständchen
Die Mainacht
Mondnacht
Meine Liebe ist grün
Wiegenlied
Vergebliches Ständchen
Arlen
Somewhere Over the Rainbow (from The Wizard of Oz)
Rodgers & Hammerstein
I Whistle a Happy Tune (from The King and I)
Bernstein
Somewhere (from West Side Story)
I Feel Pretty (from West Side Story)
Ponce
Estrellita
Gómez
La Morena de mi copla
Tosti
Aprile
Boito
L’altra notte in fondo al mare (from Mefistofele)
Puccini
O mio babbino caro (from Gianni Schicchi)
Leoncavallo
Mattinata
Renée Fleming (Soprano)
Hartmut Höll (Piano)
Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming is one of the most acclaimed singers of our time. In 2013, President Obama awarded her America's highest honour for an individual artist, the ‘National Medal of Arts’. Winner of the 2013 Best Classical Vocal Solo Grammy Award, she has sung at momentous occasions around the world, from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to performances in Beijing during the 2008 Olympic Games. In 2012, she sang on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in the Diamond Jubilee Concert for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. In 2014 she became the first classical singer ever to perform the United States National Anthem at the Super Bowl; and the same year, she celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in a televised concert at the Brandenburg Gate. An earlier distinction came in 2008 when Fleming became the first woman in the 125-year history of the Metropolitan Opera to solo headline an opening night gala.
Fleming has appeared in virtually all of the world’s greatest opera houses and concert halls. Her 2016-17 tour schedule includes concerts in San Francisco, Toronto, Boston, Budapest, Paris, Madrid, and Tokyo. This season she will be seen as the Marschallin in a new production of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera.
Known for bringing new audiences to classical music and opera, Fleming has sung not only with Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and Andrea Bocelli but also with Elton John, Paul Simon, Sting, Lou Reed, Josh Groban, and Joan Baez. Fleming has hosted a wide variety of television and radio broadcasts, including the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series and Live from Lincoln Center. She has been a frequent Guest on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and she famously sang the 'Top 10' list on The Late Show with David Letterman. In 2015, she made her Broadway début as an actress in the comedy Living on Love, for which she was nominated for a Drama League Award. In 2013, she joined with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to present American Voices, a concert and three-day festival celebrating the best American singing in all genres. The festival was the subject of a Great Performances documentary on PBS.
Fleming won her fourth Grammy Award for her album Poèmes. Her most recent album Distant Light was recorded with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and released in January by Decca. It features Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, The Strand Settings, composed for Renée by Anders Hillborg, as well as songs by Björk in new orchestral arrangements. Her first-ever holiday album, Christmas in New York, was released in 2014, and was the inspiration for a special on PBS. Recipient of 14 Grammy nominations to date, she has recorded everything from complete operas and song recitals to an album of indie rock covers, Dark Hope, the jazz album Haunted Heart and the movie soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Her recent opera DVDs include Strauss's Arabella and Ariadne auf Naxos, and Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. Other recent DVD releases include Verdi’s Otello, Handel's Rodelinda, and Massenet’s Thaïs, all three in the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD series, and Verdi’s La Traviata, filmed at London’s Royal Opera House.
In March of 2016, Fleming was appointed Artistic Advisor-At-Large for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 2010, Fleming was named the first-ever creative consultant at Lyric Opera of Chicago, where she recently curated the creation of Bel Canto, a world premiere opera based on Ann Patchett’s best-selling novel. The production was telecast on PBS Great Performances in January. Fleming is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Hall Corporation, the Board of Sing for Hope, and the Artistic Advisory Board of the Polyphony Foundation. Among her awards are the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Germany’s Cross of the Order of Merit, Honorary Membership in the Royal Academy of Music, Sweden’s Polar Music Prize, and honorary doctorates from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, Carnegie Mellon University, the Eastman School of Music and The Juilliard School.
www.reneefleming.com
Hartmut Höll
Hartmut Höll's performances are instantly distinctive for their feeling and sensitivity for sounds, as well as the ability to think beyond sounds to create atmosphere, the experiences and feelings within the sound landscape itself. Höll knows the value of chamber music collaboration and of maintaining long-term partnerships.
From 1982 to 1992, Höll was the regular performance partner of the legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, acclaimed in recitals at the Salzburg and Edinburgh Festivals, as well as in Florence, Munich, Berlin, and New York's Carnegie Hall. Höll has recorded some 60 CDs, many of which have won international awards. For nearly four decades, Höll has worked closely with Mitsuko Shirai on the lieder repertory. Their recitals, broadcasts, and CDs were highly acclaimed wordwide.
For over a decade, Höll has accompanied Renée Fleming in concerts across Europe, Australia, Asia, and North America. For him, she is the quintessential singer of our world community. He admiringly notes how this unique singer chooses from a wide repertory of works created over four centuries to transmit musical enthusiasms to people of different cultures around the world. He has also partnered in performance with other singers, including Thomas Hampson, Roman Trekel, Urszula Kryger, Yvonne Naef, Jochen Kowalski, Christoph Prégardien, René Pape, Hermann Prey, and Jadwiga Rappé, as well as instrumentalists such as the violist Tabea Zimmermann and clarinetist Sabine Meyer.
Currently a professor at the University of Music Karlsruhe, Höll previously taught at Frankfurt and Cologne, where he worked closely with new generations of performers. He was visiting professor in Helsinki (1998 to 1999) and the Salzburg Mozarteum University (1994 to 2003), has given masterclasses for lied at the Weimar International Music Seminar, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, as well as in Jerusalem, Cairo, and the United States. For nearly a decade he lectured on lied interpretation at the Zurich University of the Arts. Since October 2007, he is serving as the rector for the University of Music Karlsruhe.
In 1990, Höll was honoured with the Robert Schumann Prize of the city of Zwickau. He is an honorary member of the Robert Schumann Society Zwickau and the Philharmonic Society of St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1997, together with Mitsuko Shirai he received the ABC International Music Award.
As juror, he was appointed as the Chairman of the Robert Schumann Competition in Zwickau, invited to New York's Naumburg Competition, the ARD International Music Competition in Munich, and in 2015 to the Lili and Nadia Boulanger Competition in Paris.
From 1985 to 2007, Höll was artistic director of the International Hugo Wolf Academy, Stuttgart. Under his direction, the Academy's outstanding cultural accomplishments included festivals exploring Eduard Mörike (1988); ‘Germanies’ (1990); ‘Europe on the Move: People．Places．Migrations’ (1992 to 1993) under the honorary patronage of Simone Veil; the complete works of Schubert by over 100 performance groups (1997); ‘Nature's Sounds/Human Sounds’ (1998), invited to the Weimar - European City of Culture; and a musical-literary-cinematic ‘Trip Along the Danube’ (2002). These events had echoes far beyond the local region and led to invitations to perform at New York's Lincoln Center and the Louvre Auditorium in Paris.
In 2012, Höll's autobiographical WordMusic was published by Staccato Verlag in Düsseldorf, describing experiences, lied interpretation, and personal memories.
Due to overwhelming response, there are 10 tickets of box seats with restricted view ($250 for each ticket) available for sale at the box office of Hong Kong Cultural Centre from 10am on the day of the concert. Each person can purchase a maximum of two tickets per transaction on a first-come-first-served basis.
Tickets available from 23 February at URBTIX outlets, on Internet, by Mobile Ticketing App and Credit Card Telephone Booking.
Half-price tickets available for senior citizens aged 60 and above, people with disabilities and the minder, full-time students and Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) recipients. (Limited tickets for full-time students and CSSA recipients available on a first-come-first-served basis.)
‘Great Music’ Package Discount
For each purchase of standard tickets for ‘Vocal Recital by Renée Fleming’, ‘Concert by Midori and Philharmonic String Ensemble Vienna’, ‘Last Tango in Berlin - Ute Lemper in Concert’, ‘China National Traditional Orchestra (6/5 concert)’ and ‘China National Traditional Orchestra (7/5 concert)’, the following concession applies:
5% off for any 2 programmes, 10% off for any 3 programmes, 15% off for any 4 programmes, 20% off for all 5 programmes.
Patrons can enjoy only one of the above discount offers.
Running time of the performance is approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes including an intermission of 20 minutes. Audience is strongly advised to arrive punctually. Latecomers will only be admitted at a suitable break. Presenter reserves the right to change the programme and artists.
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