Say it ain’t so, Renée

 This is Renée Fleming, as she appears in a Rolex watch ad, and on the cover of an upcoming CD. I think she looks awful. Ghastly makeup, overdone eyes…what was she thinking of?

Let me quickly say that I don’t mind classical stars doing endorsements. It’s very likely good for classical music, since it brings these artists into the world most Americans live in. And if classical stars are tempted by the money, well, who can blame them? They’re only human, and it might well be galling, seeing teen athletes getting all the cash, when you, the evocative soprano, have disciplined yourself for years to reach a higher place.

But there are endorsements and endorsements. Rolex doesn’t seem like such a great idea, right now. Classical music needs a wider audience. Why link it to a product whose very name breathes money? Why brand it as elite and out of reach?

And then there’s the photo. It’s not a great example of its kind. It seems to say that classical musicians really don’t fit in, that they can’t be glamorous, like actresses and pop stars.

But beyond that is something even worse. What kind of artist does Renée Fleming seem like here? If she were a pop star, I’d take one look, and say I didn’t want to hear her music. She comes off like a Top 40 act, someone singing mostly mindless stuff. Real artists in the pop world never look like that. They look honest, smart, and fascinating, even in their glamour shots, as you can verify (just for instance) on the stylish Annie Lennox website, or in this Joni Mitchell photograph:

Enough said. This demonstrates an unhappy tropism in classical music — it bends (maybe because of all the money that it has to raise) towards the upscale mainstream, rather than towards art.