Around Aspen: Renee Fleming

One of the highlights of the 2010 Aspen Music Festival and School season was an appearance of Renee Fleming, famous soprano and AMFS alumna.

Most of the day on Aug. 12 was devoted to Fleming, with a master class from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. with the singer and students from the Aspen Opera Theater Center. At 6 p.m. in Paepcke Auditorium there was a film screening of Fleming in the 2008 Metropolitan Opera Opening Night Gala. The gala featured Fleming singing scenes from Verdi’s La Traviata Act II, and the final scene from Richard Strauss’s Capriccio. There was a cocktail party and then an 8 p.m. celebration dinner at the Doerr-Hosier Center to honor Fleming. Hosts and underwriters for the event were Mercedes and Sid Bass, while devotees were Anne McNulty and Ann Ziff. Talking with Fleming, I was delighted to learn that she lived at Conesus Lake while she was studying at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. … the lake where I grew up. She told me she rode her bicycle around the lake every morning, something that I also often did. The westernmost and first of the Finger Lakes, Conesus Lake is 10 miles long and a mile wide.

Undercurrent … The first yellow leaves, like the first gray hairs, are always a surprise.