Renée Fleming: I Want Magic! (American Opera Arias)

The heartfelt, melting and soaring tone of Renée Fleming’s voice has long made her one of the most distinctive and recognisable of today’s sopranos. Blessed with irresistible charisma, she also has the uncanny ability to burrow to the heart of every character she portrays. This album of American opera arias, I Want Magic!, not only shows off her versatility, but also gives us a chance to hear, alongside some Gershwin and Bernstein favourites, all-too-rare music by the likes of Bernard Herrmann (from his opera Wuthering Heights) and Samuel Barber (from Vanessa). Her rendition of “Ain’t It a Pretty Night?” from Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah is ideally artless and innocent. And she sings the aria that gives the album its title, “I Want Magic!” from André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire, gloriously—not surprisingly as she played the part of Blanche DuBois at the opera’s 1998 San Francisco premiere.