Soprano Renee Fleming, "one of the most beloved and celebrated musical ambassadors of our time," according to her website, has just released Dark Hope, a collection of pop covers of songs by groups such as Arcade Fire, Death Cab for Cutie and Leonard Cohen. How is it? Seth Colter Walls and Zachary Woolfe discuss the album and the artist, who it might appeal to and what it means for opera.

Crossover is a hard row to hoe sometimes-so hard, in fact, you wonder why people even try. The ground that's tilled rarely, if ever, gives up a good crop in return. So if soprano Renee Fleming wants to drop her voice a couple octaves and cover Arcade Fire, Band of Horses-and, naturally, "Hallelujah"-no one can stop her, but it's not like folks on either side of the indie-classical chasm are gonna hold their hyper-critical, specialist fire. (I'd say Fleming's take on "Intervention" is strong. Ditto the Band of Horses number. The rest: stay away.) And, as the Times has noted, there's not much combining of disciplines on [...]