Renée Fleming and the Company of “Carousel” | Photo by Julieta Cervantes
All together now: “When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high…“. In my dreams, I can sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” the stirring ballad from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, as well as any opera diva. In real life, however, I defer to Renée Fleming, who sings it in the newly-opened Broadway production of this problematic-but-beloved musical.
Problematic because the “hero” is a wife-beater, and beloved because the score is just so beautiful. Fleming was extravagantly praised for her performance in the New York Times: “And the fabled opera star Renée Fleming is a delightful, refreshingly hedonistic Cousin Nettie. (Oh, she can sing, too, and makes fine, purifying work of that enduring sentimental war horse “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”).
