Renée Fleming’s two early-career rarities singing Vivaldi

THE SONGBIRD: Renée Fleming is one of the most famous, awarded, and recorded sopranos of her generation. She was born in Pennsylvania in 1959 to a musical family where both her parents were music teachers. After a BA in Music Education in Potsdam and a Masters of Music at Eastman School of Music, she attended the Aspen Music Festival. She won a Fulbright Scholarship in 1985, which enabled her to study in Europe with Arleen Auger and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Further studies followed at Juilliard with Beverley Peck Johnson. Her first professional leading role was Konstanze in Salzburg in 1986. In 1989, Fleming made her debut with the New York City Opera as Mimi -- other roles there included Micaela and Countess Almaviva, the later being a role she has sung at most of the opera capitals in the world and served as her Met debut in 1991. She has since built a long, incredible career full of artistic versatility and prolific professional achievements. Here is a rare capture of Fleming quite early in her career singing a baroque motet in two different venues. THE MUSIC: Numbered RV623 in the Vivaldi catalogue, "Canta in prato, ride in monte" is one of his sacred Italian motets, composed when he was the music director at Ospedale della Pietà, a girls' orphanage in Venice. This joyful vocal piece ("Sing in the meadow, laugh in the mountains") follows the standard structure of aria-recit-aria then closing with a final virtuosic Alleluia. There is a reference in the first aria to the nightingale with some bird-like warbles. The second aria is full of intricate fioratura.