Happy Birthday, Renee Fleming (and Vic Morrow)

While I was working on a review of Renee Fleming’s crossover CD last week, I discovered she’d been born on Valentine’s Day. That means on this Sunday, the renowned Soprano will celebrate her 57th birthday.

Actor/director Vic Morrow was also born on Valentine’s Day. Had he lived and not died so tragically before his time, he too would be celebrating a birthday — his 87th one.

That means two of my all-time favorite performance artists share the same day of birth: February 14th. So rather than reminisce in prose about their lives, I decided to pay respective tribute with poetry.

Here are two mini-odes for two beacons of artistic integrity.

For Renee Fleming:
Flaming Lyric Soprano
by
D.G. Connelly

I like to watch you sing.
Just listening to your voice doesn’t do that thing
— not for me or for anybody else nearby —
because you truly are operatic chanteuse
for both the ear and eye.

Why does your plaintive sigh
bewitch and beguile us with more furtive delight
than all that ho-hum pyrotechnic bel canto
from any other prima donna dynamo?
Pourquoi, Renee, how so?

Vraiment, je ne sais pas.
Your vocals breathe life into both queen and amah.
Is it because you’re The People’s Diva, mon coeur?
Or could it be that your roulades transcend into
bright aural rose timbre?

Heartface equals heartsong.
Your music is prayer — evensong to siren’s song —
and when you talk to God, we want to listen too,
for your ethereal hymns make eavesdropping ring
dulcet and duende-true.

For Vic Morrow
(1929-1982)
Favorite Soldier of Misfortune
by
D.G. Connelly

Come, restless creative heart:
Immerse your many selves into any old part.

Be it Captain or King or
another commonplace Artie West bad guy thing,
Be it comely Combat! debauchee
ensconced in obsidian MG,
Or mobster cowboy cursing the sun
with transient battles yet to be won.
Show us again how it’s really done,
show us again how you make acting
seem so easy — but never so fun.

Just grant us your ephemeral light
so your followers can truly learn
how Bronx Incandescence burns too bright.
Instruct us so that we can believe,
and fondly remember and retrieve
how your emotions accumulate,
so you can become Everyman’s son.

Your eyes tell us it’s too late,
but we cannot stop watching you, Sgt. Saunders…