“All the Things You Are” from Very Warm for May

Very Warm for May
Music: Jerome Kern
Lyrics: Oscar Hammerstein II

Renée Fleming, soprano
Robert Ainsley, pianist

Composer Jerome Kern (1885-1945) and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) created four shows together. Their initial venture was one of the greatest of all American musicals, Show Boat. This was followed by three shows that remain unknown to audiences today: Sweet Adeline, Music in the Air, and their final show as a writing team, Very Warm for May. Those shows did make significant contributions to American popular song, in a period when many hit tunes from musical theater were embraced by popular singers and enjoyed by the general public.

Very Warm for May (1939) marked Kern’s much-anticipated return to Broadway after six years in Hollywood. It lasted only 59 performances, but one of its songs has endured in popularity. The show has a flimsy, thoroughly unbelievable plot, including a play-within-a-play during which “All the Things You Are” is sung. Originally performed as a quartet, it quickly earned the world’s admiration in solo performances, becoming one of the most treasured love songs in the “American songbook.”

Soprano

Renée Fleming

Previously at Lyric: Ten roles since1993|94, most recently Hanna Glawari|The Merry Widow(2015|16); CountessMadeleine/Capriccio(2014|15); eight gala concerts;duo recital with Susan Graham.

Renée Fleming, Lyric’s special projects advisor and formerly its first creative consultant, is one of the most beloved and celebrated singers of our time. Winner of the National Medal of Arts (awarded by President Obama at the White House in 2013) and a four-time Grammy® Award winner, Fleming brought her voice to a vast new audience in 2014 as the first classical artist to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl. She has performed at distinguished occasions worldwide, from Oslo’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to the balcony of Buckingham Palace for the Diamond Jubilee Concert for HM Queen Elizabeth II. A groundbreaking distinction came in 2008 when Fleming became the first woman to solo-headline a Metropolitan Opera opening-night gala. Recent achievements include Nettie Fowler/Carousel (Broadway musical debut, Tony Award® nomination); Margaret Johnson/The Light in the Piazza (London, Los Angeles, Chicago); title role/Norma Jeane Baker of Troy (opening of New York City’s newest arts space, The Shed); a virtual solo recital for the Met at Washington’s Dumbarton Oaks; and the latest addition to her extensive discography, a program of songs by Schumann, Brahms, and Mahler.

Photo: Scott Suchman