The beautiful sound of what’s still to come

What does it mean that Renée Fleming performed Ravel’s “Shéhérazade” at the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s opening night gala Thursday in Walt Disney Concert Hall?

Fleming also sang these three opulent songs by an Orient-intoxicated French composer last month for the San Francisco Symphony’s opening gala. And since the American soprano couldn’t be in two places at the same, Susan Graham opened the Boston Symphony’s season Thursday with the same Ravel cycle.

It may be time to dig out Edward Said’s “Orientalism.” The Arab world worries us to no end, yet here we are entranced all over again with, to use Said’s language, the nonsynchronous experiences of Europe’s Other.

Or perhaps it’s enough simply to note what Fleming wore. Wrapped around her glittery gown was a sea-green shawl that extended far enough onto the floor that Esa-Pekka Salonen had to execute a graceful little hop over it to reach the podium.

This was a night for partying, after all. A blue carpet was outside for those who cared to make a grand entrance on Grand Avenue. Tented pavilions with chandeliers took over the street.

Musical points could be discussed. The short concert began strongly with the “Love Scene” from Berlioz’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which Salonen conducted slowly, taking time to bring out startling accents. It ended with another startling sound. After the “Ball Scene” from “Romeo and Juliet,” a shot rang out -- a cannon had released shiny, festive streamers into the hall.

Berio’s wonderful arrangement of Boccherini’s “Ritirata Notturna di Madrid,” which requires a pair of snare drums and has the quality of an Italian “Bolero,” was interestingly placed between the Ravel and a couple of Puccini favorites from Fleming. So maybe one could talk about the relationship between Italy’s two greatest 20th century composers, about the ways in which the populist Puccini broke new ground and the avant-gardist Berio looked to the past.

But, as I said, it was a party. And I think the evening will be remembered for something else: Fleming asked us to join her in her encore. Many did. It was “I Could Have Danced All Night” from “My Fair Lady.”

Suddenly, Salonen, the serious Modernist and all that, was thrust into a Lerner and Loewe singalong. When he turned away from the orchestra to sheepishly egg on the audience, it looked as if he knew he might never live this one down among his cutting-edge friends back in Finland.

Fleming, for her part, seems to have begun seriously straddling a cultural divide. Just before starting her current round of American orchestra galas (she also helped out the National Symphony in Washington, D.C., last month, but not with the Ravel), she premiered a new orchestral song cycle by the eloquent 91-year-old French composer Henri Dutilleux.

In “Shéhérazade,” she revealed how marvelously her voice is maturing. A piece usually sung by mezzo-sopranos, it suits Fleming well. Her beautiful soprano is her calling card. But those wine-rich lows suggest that her greatest years may be ahead of her, once her top starts to diminish. Using her low range to conjure up mysterious Asia, evoke a languorous flute or return the gaze of androgynous eyes, Fleming seemed to lose both pretense and herself in Ravel’s erotic never-never land.

Yet when she tried to be dramatic, she was almost offensive. Violence is eroticized in the Tristan Klingsor poems that Ravel set. But Fleming took the violence literally, as if this were just one more occasion for operatic outbursts or, worse, as if Ravel’s Middle East of a hundred years ago was the same as the violence-torn region today.

Her Puccini -- “O mio babbino caro” and “Vissi d’arte” -- was all show. She held notes forever and a day, and Salonen graciously deferred. She offered reams of luxurious sound -- a thickening of her voice is also highly attractive, even if it doesn’t do much for enunciation. But her grand manners felt phony.

Fleming sang a Strauss program with Salonen last season in New York, and there have been rumors that he might write something for her. Thursday’s gala offered hope. Fleming is at the top of the opera world. She has all the fame she could ever need, but the real artist in her may just be coming out.

Her jazz singing (which she didn’t do Thursday) has gone from execrable to interesting. Her involvement in new music is promising. And anyone who could entice Esa-Pekka Salonen into conducting “I Could Have Danced All Night” has some kind of power.

mark.swed@latimes.com