Opera star Fleming sets out on "Dark" adventure

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Opera superstar Renee Fleming's favorite piece on "Dark Hope," her new album, features unusual, almost Gregorian chant-like harmonies. In fact, she describes the song as "vocally the rangiest piece we did; the text is so enigmatic and strange."

But the song in question isn't an aria from a forgotten opera or a long-lost baroque oratorio. It's "With Twilight as My Guide," a bit of dark ambience from progressive-rock band the Mars Volta. And along with songs by Death Cab for Cutie, Muse, Arcade Fire and six other decidedly nonclassical acts, the album is an adventurous, mold-shattering project from arguably the world's greatest living soprano.

"Dark Hope" -- which Decca releases June 8 -- is the brainchild of Peter Mensch and Cliff Burnstein, founders of management company Q Prime, which counts Def Leppard and Metallica as career-long clients. Mensch had been seeking a classically trained singer to breathe new life into modern material -- not quite crossover but a different take on great songwriting that could have international appeal. He reached out to Fleming through a longtime friend, Decca chairman Chris Roberts, after seeing her glamorous image on a bus side promoting a new Metropolitan Opera production of the French opera "Thais."

"I was riding my bike and spied the bus poster," Mensch says. "She looked great in the picture, like Madonna. And I went, 'F---, it's Renee Fleming.' Suddenly the fog lifted."

But why would a full-fledged opera diva want to get down and dirty in the troubled minds of modern youth? As the world's go-to opera star, Fleming regularly sings for heads of state, including Barack Obama at his presidential inauguration. She also has a perfume, a dessert and an iris named after her, and she's booked for international opera productions through the next several years. The classical star has sold 900,000 albums, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But with projects like 2005's jazz and folk collection "Haunted Heart" and last year's performance on Elvis Costello's "Spectacle" program on the Sundance Channel, Fleming showed that her interests aren't limited to her native genre.

"The whole idea sounded very fresh. And at a certain point you have to go with your gut," she says. "I just thought this could be an adventure, a learning experience. Most important, I was genuinely surprised by the music I heard."

The results of Fleming's sessions with producer David Kahne range from the inspirational proclamations of Willy Mason's "Oxygen" to the desperate entreaties of Arcade Fire's "Intervention," which features Fleming's teenage daughters on background vocals.

Early buzz on classical music blogs about Fleming's redefinition of rock opera has been less than kind. But Roberts shrugs off the naysayers. "It's important for an artist like Renee to do projects that are very different from what they normally do at a time in their career when they feel very secure. Nothing is going to happen to her classical music career. Twenty-five years of performing at the highest level don't go away because you make a record that a handful of people take exception to."

Mensch is even more frank. "I don't care what anyone says. It's a great record."