Renée Fleming

Soprano

Arts/Health Advocate
Artistic Advisor-at-Large, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Director, SongStudio at Carnegie Hall
Co-Director, Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS

Biography

Renée Fleming is one of the most acclaimed singers of our time, performing on the stages of the world’s greatest opera houses and concert halls. Honored with five Grammy® awards and the US National Medal of Arts, Renée has sung for momentous occasions from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to the Diamond Jubilee Concert for Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. In 2014 Renée became the first classical artist ever to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. A ground-breaking distinction came in 2008 when she became the first woman in the 125-year history of the Metropolitan Opera to solo headline an opening night gala.

Renée’s concert calendar this season includes appearances in Berlin, Vienna, Amsterdam, Milan, London, Los Angeles, Chicago, and at Carnegie Hall. In November, Renée starred in the world premiere staging of The Hours, a new opera by Kevin Puts based on the best-selling novel and award-winning film, at the Metropolitan Opera. In the spring, she will portray Pat Nixon in Nixon in China at the Opéra de Paris. Renée is currently starring in a series of IMAX films, Renée Fleming’s Cities That Sing. Each episode highlights the music of a great cultural capital, with performances and visits to notable locations. The first two episodes, about Paris and Venice respectively, premiere this spring.

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Renée has recorded everything from complete operas and song recitals to indie rock and jazz. In January, Decca released a special double-length album of live recordings from Renée’s greatest performances at the Metropolitan Opera. In February, Renée received the Grammy Award (her fifth) for Best Classical Vocal Solo for her album Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene, with Yannick Nézet-Seguin as pianist. A collection of classical songs and specially commissioned world premieres, the album focuses on nature as both inspiration and victim of human activity. Known for bringing new audiences to classical music and opera, Renée has sung not only with Luciano Pavarotti and Andrea Bocelli, but also with Elton John, Paul Simon, Sting, Josh Groban, and Joan Baez. She has hosted a wide variety of television and radio broadcasts, including the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series and Live from Lincoln Center. Her voice is featured on the soundtracks of Best Picture Oscar winners The Shape of Water and The Lord of the Rings.

In recent years, Renée has become known as a leading advocate for research at the intersection of arts, health, and neuroscience. As Artistic Advisor to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, she launched the first ongoing collaboration between America’s national cultural center and its largest health research institute, the National Institutes of Health. In association with the National Endowment for the Arts, Sound Health brings together leading neuroscientists, music therapists and arts practitioners to better understand the impact of arts on the mind and body. Inspired by the Sound Health initiative, Renée has created a program called Music and the Mind, which she has presented in more than 50 cities around the world, earning Research!America’s 2020 Isadore Rosenfeld Award for Impact on Public Opinion. In 2020, Renée launched Music and Mind LIVE, a weekly web show exploring the connections between arts, human health, and the brain, amassing nearly 700,000 views, from 70 countries. She is now an advisor for major initiatives in this field, including the Sound Health Network at the University of California San Francisco and the NeuroArts Blueprint at Johns Hopkins University.

Renée’s book The Inner Voice was published by Viking Penguin in 2004 and is now in its sixteenth printing. It is also published in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Poland, Russia, and China. Advisor for Special Projects at LA Opera, Renée also leads SongStudio at Carnegie Hall. She is Co-Director of the Aspen Opera Center and VocalArts at the Aspen Music Festival. Renée’s other awards include the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, Germany’s Cross of the Order of Merit, Sweden’s Polar Music Prize, and France’s Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. www.reneefleming.com

Reviews

“The Beautiful Voice soared, swelled and glistened at the Kennedy Center on Saturday night. Renee Fleming, the soprano possessed of this sobriquet, gave a recital at the Concert Hall, courtesy of the Washington Performing Arts Society, to a large and appreciative crowd; she brought her A-game, and everyone was happy…Fleming has been America’s reigning diva for more than a decade now…on Saturday [she] offered some of the shining freshness that grabbed everyone’s attention when she was just coming onto the scene: gleaming high notes arcing downwards like wires of gold.”

Anne Midgette

Washington Post

“Renée Fleming is a true diva du jour. Her sumptuous soprano, dazzling technique and glamorous persona make her the complete package. Resplendently gowned, she cut an elegant figure at her Schubert Club recital Thursday at the Ordway. But she was utterly natural in the way she addressed the audience with eager enthusiasm about the program…Fleming unleashed her luxurious voice in an over-the-top rendering of the death scene from Umberto Giordano’s Fedora. Especially thrilling was ‘The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,’ a cycle that jazz musician Brad Mehldau wrote for Fleming using poems by Rainer Maria Rilke…she sang the challenging music with emotional commitment. Equally successful was ‘Jane Grey’ an Arnold Schoenberg song about the nine-day queen of England. Fleming embraced this post-Romantic monologue as a great dramatic scene and told a deeply felt story. This was also true of three songs by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, which seemed particularly suited to her. She poured her heart into them, bringing some exquisite floated pianissimos expressively to bear.”

William Randall Beard

St. Paul Star Tribune

More Reviews

“She came, she sang, she conquered: Soprano Renée Fleming triumphed at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra gala concert on Saturday night at Powell Hall. Fleming has presence and glamour (enhanced by her spectacular form-fitting strapless violet dress, with a floor-sweeping black tulle stole, diamond necklace and big hair), and made the audience feel like old friends. Most of all, she was in excellent voice…She sang [‘Song to the Moon,’ from Dvorák’s opera Rusalka] ravishingly, her voice like rose gold… her final number, ‘O mio babbino caro,’ from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, was sung flawlessly, and made the perfect ending to the evening.”

Sarah Bryan Miller, St. Louis Post Dispatch

“Renée Fleming has always made very particular and personal choices of operatic roles. Over the years, the managers of the Metropolitan Opera, fully appreciative of Ms. Fleming’s vocal artistry and star power, have been ready to accommodate her. The company has mounted house premiere productions of three strikingly diverse operas — Carlisle Floyd’s ‘Susannah,’ Bellini’s ‘Pirata’ and Handel’s ‘Rodelinda’ — specifically for Ms. Fleming. On Monday night the Met obliged Ms. Fleming with another house premiere, Rossini’s ‘Armida,’ in a fanciful production by the director Mary Zimmerman. In requesting this fantastical, infrequently heard 1817 work, which, with two intermissions, lasted nearly four hours, Ms. Fleming was hardly playing it safe. Armida is an alluring, conniving sorceress, the niece of the cagey King of Damascus during the crusades. The role is a tour de force for a soprano who can combine alluring long-spun lyrical singing with dazzling, sometimes demonic, coloratura flights. … This was Ms. Fleming’s show, and she was impressive over all. She first sang the role at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, Italy, in 1993, a performance recorded live for a Sony release. In 1996 she triumphed as Armida in a concert performance with the Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall, conducted by Eve Queler. … ‘Armida’ belongs at the Met. And the company has the right star in place.”

Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times