Renee Fleming To Make Her Broadway Debut
Renee Fleming is set to make her Broadway debut. She’s been on stage before, as she’s been involved in performances on the Carnegie Hall and Metropolitan Opera stages, but her Broadway debut is a huge deal for the Grammy winner.
According to Billboard, Fleming will appear in Joe DiPietro’s comedy Living on Love. The show will start its run in the spring, and will is directed by Kathleen Marshall.
In its first run outside of Broadway the play featured performances by Fleming, Justin Long, Anna Clumsky, and Douglas Sills at the Williamstown Theater Festival.
In the play, Fleming took on the role of Raquel, an opera diva opposite actor Douglas Sills, who played her “hot-tempered” husband. In the show, they both end up falling in love for their assistants.
Billboard describes Renee Fleming’s Living on Love as, “The screwball comedy concerns an opera star on a downward career spiral who becomes enraged with jealousy when her temperamental conductor husband grows infatuated with the beautiful young woman hired to ghostwrite his largely fictional autobiography. She retaliates by hiring a handsome writer to work on her own book. And yes, Fleming gets to do some singing in the role.”
In the review from the New York Times, the publication said the play needed work but had kind words for Renee Fleming.
“Then there’s Ms. Fleming. Like all the characters, Raquel is an assemblage of tics and quirks rather than a flesh-and-blood human. Ms. Fleming’s take on the role is eight-lane-highway broad, and she has the costumes to match. But when she ascends into an aria, letting her heavens-grazing voice stand in for Raquel’s, she seems entirely in tune.”
Despite already being an accomplished opera singer, Fleming looks like she’s really getting in good with the Broadway crowd, as she has posted a photo with Idina Menzel.
Backstage at possibly world’s most unexpected concert, with delightful company, @KISSOnline & @idinamenzel #XmasinNY pic.twitter.com/0zs5gJ1w8W
— Renee Fleming (@reneesmusings) November 27, 2014
Loved singing in the Parade! Hey @Macys, can a girl get an umbrella up here? #XmasinNY #hairbymothernature pic.twitter.com/qrdggQaCt0
— Renee Fleming (@reneesmusings) November 27, 2014
@broadwayworld @reneesmusings very proud to be apart of this and see Broadway audiences fall in love with Renee
— TNT DynaMite Prod. (@TNTDynaMiteProd) December 22, 2014
@THR Renee Fleming is exquisite, but Justin Long as a sidekick? He sings like a drowned cat tied inside a bag dropped in the East River!
— Elan Durham (@europabridge1) December 22, 2014
[Image via lev radin / Shutterstock.com]