Renée Fleming is not just a soprano; she’s an event. From this National Medal of Arts recipient, five-time Grammy winner, and (as of last May) World Health Organization goodwill ambassador for arts and health, one expects something spectacular and memorable whenever she shows up on stage. At Sunday afternoon’s recital with pianist Inon Barnatan, presented by Celebrity Series of Boston, all the pieces were present to create something great, but the way those pieces were assembled made everything feel somewhat unfinished.
Before embarking on the first segment of the program, which was inspired by her 2022 album “Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene,” she asked that the audience hold applause until the end of the half. It was a necessary reiteration of the request printed in the program book; if she sings, they will clap. Fleming’s star power is undiminished from the height of her onstage career, and her warm charisma would be enough to fill Symphony Hall twice over.
The first half was accompanied with a bespoke video projected overhead, featuring picturesque nature images and a few visual reminders of mankind’s impact on the planet; here a natural disaster, there an industrial scene. The second half of the recital included no video accompaniment, but the lyrics appeared on the same screen.
The repertoire she selected was smartly curated to showcase her best assets: her lustrous, expressive soprano voice and her skill as a singing storyteller. Handel’s “Care selve,” Nico Muhly’s pensive “Endless Space,” and Björk’s “All Is Full of Love” — the latter sung with a microphone and Debussy-esque accompaniment that elevated it beyond karaoke — were the first half’s glories.
However, if you were looking at the nature images in the first half, you weren’t looking at Fleming, and she had much more to say than the images did. Perhaps if the screen had been behind her instead of above her, this wouldn’t have been such an issue, but the audience had to choose where to look; at Fleming, or at the film, and the setup of the stage was such that it wanted you to look at the film, with Fleming’s role somewhat relegated to background music.
The problem here: Fleming does not do background music, even when she’s singing on a movie soundtrack. (“Twilight and Shadow” from “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” was on the program, luminescent.) Also, the images only nominally matched the subject matter of the songs — or in some cases, like during Barnatan’s lightning-fast solo turn through the Presto movement from Rachmaninoff’s “Six moments musicaux,” they didn’t gel at all. Running water, sure. A butterfly slowly climbing a leaf — why?
Fleming is no stranger to stepping outside of the opera/art song box, and the program included several forays into popular and theatrical repertoire. These were treated on paper with the same import as the classical repertoire, but their effectiveness was variable. “All Is Full of Love” was a strong spot, as was Hazel Dickens’s “Pretty Bird.” However, neither her rendition of “All the Things You Are” nor the “What the World Needs Now” that ended the first half said anything original. I couldn’t complain too much about “What the World Needs Now,” though, paired as it was with a montage of adorable baby animals. Got me there, Renée!
Fleming has cultivated a distinct onstage personality of self-aware diva. “I still love gown applause,” she giggled at the beginning of the second half, when she appeared in a floor-length dress covered with sequins, the dazzling copper of a new penny. On the first half’s gown, she commented, “Every time I put it on, I think ‘Barbie’s mother.’” (This Barbie is a world-renowned soprano.) Songs by Fauré and Grieg were entrancing. Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro” was wonderfully simple and unaffected, making for a refreshing take on the well-traveled soprano chestnut.
And she knows how to make them laugh. The last piece on the printed program was Andrew Lippa’s “The Diva,” which Fleming described as “the closest I’ll ever get to hip-hop.” What she did could only be called rapping insofar as Stephen Sondheim’s Witch from “Into the Woods” raps; now someone get her on Broadway for that role, please?
No self-described diva would dare leave Symphony Hall without an encore, and she and Barnatan produced a poignant surprise with a strikingly raw rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” with the audience invited to sing along on the chorus. “I knew there were some singers here,” she said with a smile between verses. Got us again, Renée. Come back soon.
RENÉE FLEMING AND INON BARNATAN
At Symphony Hall, Feb. 4. Presented by Celebrity Series of Boston. www.celebrityseries.org
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her @knitandlisten.