Music : Renee and Bryn: Under the Stars

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by: John Harold Kander, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Claude-Michel Schoenberg, Richard Rodgers, Gerard Presgurvic, Jason Robert Brown, Meredith Willson, Lucy Simon, Cole Porter, Stephen Flaherty, Ralph Salmins, David Hartley

: Renee and Bryn: Under the Stars

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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0028947325024
Label: Decca
Manufacturer: Decca
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Decca
Release Date: February 11, 2003
Sales Rank: 26467
Studio: Decca



Disc 1:
  1. "Not While I'm Around" (from Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim)
  2. "Moonfall" (from The Mystery of Edwin Drood by R. Holmes)
  3. "I Don't Remember You The Happy Tim" and "Sometimes a Day Goes By" (from Woman of the Year by Kander & Ebb)
  4. "All the Love I Have" (from The Beautiful Game by Ben Elton & Andrew Lloyd Webber)
  5. "I Wish I Could Forget You / Loving You" (from Passion by Stephen Sondheim)
  6. "Stars" (from Les Misirables by Boublil & Schvnberg)
  7. "All I Ask of You" (from The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber)
  8. "Hello, Young Lovers" (from The King and I by Rodgers & Hammerstein)
  9. "Pretty Women" (from Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim)
  10. "Aimer" (from Romio et Juliette by Presgurvic)
  11. "All the Wasted Time" (from Parade by J. Brown)
  12. "Seventy-Six Trombones" (from The Music Man by Willson)
  13. "How Could I Ever Know" (from The Secret Garden by Simon and Norman)
  14. "So In Love" (from Kiss Me Kate by Cole Porter)
  15. "Wheels Of a Dream" (from Ragtime by Ahrens & Flaherty)
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Editorial Review:

Amazon.com:
In these days of the crossover, it is hardly surprising to find two great opera singers making a foray into numbers from Broadway musicals by such composers as Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. What's remarkable is that they seem completely at home in this music. Both say they grew up listening to it, and indeed they approach these songs with no less care and seriousness than they'd give the most demanding operatic arias, and without a trace of condescension. However, their vocal, expressive, and interpretive styles are very different, both in the solos and the duets. Terfel projects assertive manliness, tender, intimate affection, and rollicking humor without external effects, using only his incomparably sonorous voice and powerful personality. His diction is impeccably clear, and though he has sometimes let his theatrical flair spill over into Schubert songs, he is the soul of simplicity here. This is in stark contrast to Fleming's tendency to exaggerate colors and dynamics and to turn sentiment into sentimentality. Moreover, though she claims a background as a jazz singer, her "crooning" sounds artificial and unnatural. However, her top notes, culminating in a triumphant high C at the end of the final number, ring gloriously. Her voice glows and shimmers with irresistible luster, soaring from seductive whispers to thrilling climaxes. The program features a great variety of love songs, and includes an antiwar protest (from Beautiful Game), a celebration of the American dream (from Ragtime), and a rousing fun piece (from The Music Man). Unfortunately, even the best songs are marred by thoroughly corny arrangements. Listeners will find their own favorites, but the real "stars" on this record are the two singers. --Edith Eisler



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars - They're opera singers. OPERA.
Ok, so I have been a fan of Broadway and Opera for quite some time, and I think most people can agree that there are distinct differences between the two genres. There is a difference in vocal training, tone, and style.

Renee Fleming and Bryn Terfel are amazing opera singers. I have seen them both live, and they are incredible. However, they are trained in OPERA. Not Broadway. They do try, but this album falls flat for me just because their voices don't sound right performing this kind of music.

Basically, I feel that if you want to hear opera singers voices to their fullest potential, you should buy an album where they perform opera. So if you are a Broadway purist of sorts and are used to hearing a certain kind of voice doing these songs, you should steer clear of this album. Or buy it as cheaply as you possibly can if you're really that curious.


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Two of the great operatic voices of today sing Broadway
Bryn Terfel and Renee Fleming have two of the best voices in classical music, and clearly they bring an incomparable luster, richness, and sense of melodic beauty to these Broadway songs.

The main problems on this CD are that they are divorced from their original contexts within the shows, having more pop-sounding orchestrations. Hence, the duet of "All I Ask of You" is no longer between Christine Daae and her handsome suitor Raul in "Phantom of the Opera" but becomes a generic love duet, and one misses Sarah Brightman's genuinely "smaller," more delicate, ingenue-sounding interpretation.

Or "Not While I'm Around," the duet between Mrs. Lovett and Toby from "Sweeney Todd," loses its dramatic meaning and irony, even though astonishingly beautiful (and incomparably more so than the Patti Lupone or Angela Lansbury's renditions). And I'm sure it knocks the socks off the sung version to hit the movie theaters, with non-singers Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter in the leads).

"Pretty Women" also from "Sweeney Todd"(cf. the DVD of the George Hearn/Patty Lupone/S.F. Symphony) is a duet between Sweeney Todd and Judge Turpin, not a solo--and it's context is that of the actual meeting between the two while the former is about to give the latter "the closest shave he'll have ever had," just before he slits the judge's throat. In the single lit area of the stage, its melodious rapturous parallel singing between the two is the counterpart to the murder, the apex of the duet.

Or the heart-aching, lovely "How Could I Ever Know?" from "Secret Garden," a conventional love duet here. In the show, Uncle Archibald's dead wife Lily has come back to comfort him, bitter and unable to open himself up to his own daughter, and Fleming sings beautifully--but the dramatic meaning of the words she sings is missing.

On the other hand, the singing of Rene Fleming of "Moonfall" with its richness, beauty, and subtlety does not require a dramatic context, its lyricism being sufficient.

Terfel is more in his natural element than Fleming and his singing of "I Don't Remember You/A Day Goes By" is sturdy, natural, and very moving. And of course, his "Stars" sends the listener "up to the skies," as the actor/singer who plays Javert in "Les Miserables" does on the stage.

Fleming's somewhat or especially mannered approach (she sometimes speaks in a very arch, "knowing" manner worthy of Barbra Streisand--at her most self-indulgent--what would have been a sung line in the show) backfires about half the time ("So in Love" or "All I Ask of You").

On the other hand, when she "lets go," as in "All the Wasted Time," or "Wheels of a Dream," it actually "works," with great dramatic power.

Stunningly designed, glossy brochure with lyrics of all the songs included.

In any case, I know of very few Broadway cast albums where the actor-singers bring the full-bodied, "360 degree" musical bravura of the two artists on this CD. Broadway would be very fortunate to have these voices grace anything...especially in this day of miked voice amplification.




Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Surprisingly Fine Cross-Over from Fleming and Terfel
Bryn Terfel and Renee Fleming are two of the most acclaimed opera singers of our day. But the musical theatre fan who puts on their Broadway CD, RENEE AND BRYN: UNDER THE STARS, expecting to hear a carelessly compiled hodgepodge of songs sung by voices ill-suited to them is in for a big surprise, beginning with the first phrases of the duo's warmly sung "Not While I'm Around" from SWEENEY TODD. True, these singers' beautiful voices have greater power and range than even the best of the Broadway stars', but this is an asset in these songs, most of which are either semi-operatic in nature or call (like THE MUSIC MAN's "Seventy-Six Trombones") for such an outsize personality as Terfel's. Fleming's sensuous and tonally gorgeous rendition of "Moonfall" from THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD can be placed among her very finest recordings, operatic and otherwise. And Terfel is ideally suited to both "Pretty Women" from SWEENEY TODD and "Stars" from LES MISERABLES; few if any Broadway Javerts could match the impact of his "This I swear by the stars!" Kander and Ebb's "I Don't Remember You" and "Sometimes a Day Goes By" make a perfect medley here, as do Sondheim's "I Wish I Could Forget You" and "Loving You" from PASSION. The sound of Fleming's voice entering in "All I Ask of You" (THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA) is of the utmost loveliness; and though I don't care for the Jason Robert Brown selection, which sounds too much like a pop song, Fleming makes a strong impression in it. The program ends with a bang: a rendition of "Wheels of a Dream" worthy to stand beside the now-classic one by Brian Stokes Mitchell and Audra McDonald on the original cast album of RAGTIME. Welshman Terfel's natural accent is noticeable here; but if one imagines him as, say, an Irish immigrant married to an African-American woman (as Fleming here sounds uncannily like McDonald or like Leontyne Price) his accent is appropriate and his voicing of the "bridge" section ("Oh Sarah, it's more than promises/Sarah, it must be true...") especially moving. Fleming's ecstatic final high note makes one want to applaud and cheer, both for the song and for the successful "crossover" effort.




Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Narrowly saved from a 4-Star rating
I adore Renee, and Bryn is flawless, but I had to adjust my mind when listening ot this album. Keep in mind that this powerful duo is tackling contemporary broadway music in this project. This is not the typical recording of opera areas that we are so used to with Renee. Being my introduction to Bryn, I cannot judge his style by this album.

However, considering the ventures that Renee has taken recently with her very accomplished, artful jazz albums as well as her overall ability to take on new challenges with finess and grace, I think that this album certainly deserves the full 5-star rating.

As I look at composers such as Sondheim, who was a pioneer in his own genre of musical creation, I do not think that he would have been allarmed at all in the rather free-style rendition of "Not While I'm Around". It very well might insult the traditional ear not accustomed to hearing something familiar presented in a new way, but I found it refreshing.

Renee takes on and, non suprisingly, conquors the "belter" style so sought after on the Broadway stage. Remember, she is first known as an opera diva, and yet has flawlessly embarked on so many other musical journies.

Amazingly, Renee braves ,"All I Ask Of You", which is associated with Sarah Brightman. Brightman has a much smaller and more delicate voice, and yet, Renee duitifully keeps inside the stylistic parameters required when singing this well-known Broadway classic. Of course, it certainly helps that Renee has Bryn's huge voice backing her up on this. I wonder what she would do with Josh Groban or A finer-voiced tenor?

It was interesting to hear that several of the pieces recorded were not duets. An interesting and brave touch, but one that allows the ear to avoid fatigue of insistant harmonies and the same sound repeated on different melodies and lyrics. Bravo!

I am thrilled that this project was done as thoughtfully and artfully as it was, and I am looking forward to seeing what Renee will come up with next to challenge her incredible voice.


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Delightful
Terfel's vocal talent is well suited for Broadway style of singing. Fleming's voice is a bit overpowering for this genre. (I own this CD)

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