Fleming, Warrior Princess

The following image was sent out this morning to publicize the Washington National Opera’s upcoming production of Lucrezia Borgia with Renée Fleming (by an indy publicist, NOT the opera company, and NOT Renée’s publicist, that’s for sure):

I mean….

As one journalist pointed out, is she an action figure, now?? ((stocking stuffers for the whole family!))

Is this image “on message” for any of the parties involved? Who or what does it seek to represent? And it was sent to east coast classical press? Y-i-k-e-s. Yikes.

Tip of the iceberg, but the “F” in Fleming could at least be capitalized.

With a major production like this, it is interesting to think about the different publicity agendas involved; I, as an independent publicist, could not pitch Eric Owens at the expense of the larger picture of Doctor Atomic, for example, and similarly, The Met could not ignore his role in the production in their marketing and publicity efforts. It’s time consuming to get all the parties for any given artist or production on the same proverbial page, but when you don’t, this jpeg is the “page” you end up with. And when you do, of course, it can be quite powerful; we are all, in theory, working toward the same goals after all.

Who knows: maybe this image was approved by all parties involved. Somehow, though, I doubt it. I leave you with this:

Update 9pm-ish, same day: It seems the Fleming/Xena image is actually one of the costume designs for the production and not, in fact, a flyer or poster. I’m told that as the opera progresses, Fleming’s costumes will become more and more masculine as part of the director’s vision for the character. That would be an interesting pitch, actually, if publications were allowed to print all the sketches. Too bad it wasn’t mentioned, and the warrior princess jpeg was e mailed out without context or explanation.