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Natasha Rogai

“I don’t want to hit people over the head and make them sorry they came to the concert,” Renee Fleming said with a smile, “But I do want a sort of collective ‘We love the planet.’”
The American soprano was talking about Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene, the title of her 2021 album and “Renee Fleming: Voice of Nature”, the concert she was performing in Hong Kong.
At 66, Fleming has lost none of the beauty and glamour which, combined with her exquisite voice and dramatic ability, have made her one of the world’s greatest opera stars. She seems indefatigable – the city was the second stop in Asia following Shanghai – and she gave three lectures in Hong Kong in addition to her two concerts.
What drives her is her desire to bring home the message about sustainability and biodiversity, she said.
The Voice of Nature project began as an album which she created with Canadian conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fleming had always been interested in how so much of the great poetry of the 19th century had framed the human condition through the lens of nature, and then been set to music, she said. Yet later art songs tend to deal with other subjects. “So I wanted to compare our relationship with nature in that period with now.”
The album won a Grammy in 2023, and Fleming decided to take the concept on the road.
The shows performed with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra on October 24-25 had a first half consisting of songs related to different aspects of nature, accompanied by a film created by the National Geographic Society to match each number, and therefore performed in a continuous sequence. Audiences were asked not to applaud until the end.
The incorporation of a visual element helped to bring home the message about sustainability and biodiversity, Fleming said.
“The films are beautiful,” she said, if also sad. “You can see people thinking ‘it’s so beautiful and gosh, what are we doing to it?’ but that’s the whole point. We have to have hope, and we have to do what we can.”
The second half of the concert followed a more traditional formula: celebrated arias along with songs from musicals, including “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. While the song may remind football fans of Liverpool FC, it originally comes from Carousel, a show which Fleming performed in 2018 on Broadway – not something many operatic divas have done: “I like having new experiences and that was one I certainly cherish.”

Despite her exalted status in the classical music world, Fleming has never been afraid to try different things, regularly championing new work in opera and singing duets with the likes of Sting, Elton John and Lou Reed.
This summer, she directed an opera for the first time – Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte for the Aspen Music Festival and School. To make it relevant to a current audience, she set it in 1980 and in a gym.
Finding ways to reinvent the classic repertoire like this is important to keep opera fresh, especially as the biggest challenge to operas is that they are very expensive to stage, she said.
In the United States, funding traditionally relies on private donors, but while people are still passionate about the art form, they are not necessarily supporting operas “philanthropically”, she said.
In addition to her musical career, Fleming is involved in numerous activities and has what she describes as a “real ongoing passion” for using music to promote health and wellness.
For years, she used to suffer from physical pain caused by performance pressure. “It was a kind of pain that would lift when I went on stage, but I was tortured for two weeks before.”
A decade ago, this led her to become curious about the connection between the brain and body, and she was intrigued to learn that scientists were studying music.

Dr Francis Collins, who was then director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), explained that its new brain institute was engaging in this research because “music is more impactful than any other activity on the brain. It activates every mapped area that we know about.”
Believing that the public would be interested to know about this, Fleming became actively involved – she has published a book on the subject, Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness, and she is a World Health Organization goodwill ambassador for arts and health.
The work Fleming has supported in this field was not relevant to her own issues, now resolved, which stemmed from constantly being in demand and “having people constantly wanting time”, she said.
Music can help with anxiety and depression and have a positive effect on some people, but ironically, “Since performing was actually the root of the issue in the first place, it didn’t really help me!”
Today, after what Fleming describes as “a wonderful 10 years” of involvement with the NIH programme, this is no longer being funded following massive cuts to the budget by the current US administration, cuts which were announced this year.
“Hopefully it will come back,” Fleming said, adding that 40 per cent of the programme’s budget has been cut. “You’d think that [research on] biomedical issues would benefit everybody.”

This has not stopped her from continuing to advocate an understanding of the mind/body connection.
These days, when people are finding so much entertainment on their phones or with streaming, Fleming keeps telling audiences that “just being in a concert hall, a shared environment with other people, is good for your health.
“It’s much better than being alone and isolated at home in front of the TV or the iPad. Hopefully, these health benefits will become better known,” she said.


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Soprano singer Renee Fleming on the voice of nature, how music ‘is good for your health’

Renee Fleming performs during “Renee Fleming: Voice of Nature” at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in October 2025. The shows performed on October 24-25 had a first half consisting of songs related to different aspects of nature, accompanied by a film created by the National Geographic Society. Photo: HK Phil

Renee Fleming performs during “Renee Fleming: Voice of Nature”, with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in October 2025, at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. Photo: HK Phil

Fleming and guest conductor Robert Moody with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in October 2025, at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. Photo: HK Phil

Renee Fleming performs during “Renee Fleming: Voice of Nature”, with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in October 2025. The songs are accompanied by a film created by the National Geographic Society. Photo: HK Phil

Fleming has never been afraid to try different things, regularly championing new work in opera and singing duets with the likes of Sting, Elton John and Lou Reed. Photo: courtesy of Decca

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The soprano talks about how she champions sustainability through music and her work to highlight the health benefits of music and the arts


The soprano talks about how she champions sustainability through music and her work to highlight the health benefits of music and the arts.


World of performing arts

US Department of Health and Human Services

Soprano singer Renee Fleming on the voice of nature, how music ‘is good for your health’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The soprano talks about how she champions sustainability through music and her work to highlight the health benefits of music and the arts

The soprano talks about how she champions sustainability through music and her work to highlight the health benefits of music and the arts