These last numbers might be thought an odd choice for an opera singer, but Ms. Fleming pointed out
that even her mother, the former music teacher, loves Björk: “She’s so creative, like Lady Gaga even before Lady Gaga.”
Ms. Fleming doesn’t have much interest in becoming a figure like Adelina Patti, the hugely popular 19th-
and early-20th-century opera star who went around, like Cher, giving farewell concerts for 20 years after she “retired.” What she wants is to keep on singing, a reasonable amount for a reasonable amount of time, and to be a part of whatever happens next.
Like Beyoncé, and unlike many of her opera colleagues, Ms. Fleming has gone about
her stage career — and, now, her plans for after — with unusual deliberation.
Sitting in the kitchen of her flat on one of the city’s most posh streets, she seemed less a forlorn diva than the very organized
and energetic, very American chief executive of a small company: Let’s call it Renee Fleming Inc.
“My guide to this whole process, when I was thinking about what to do, was Leontyne Price,” she said in her surprisingly
deep speaking voice — so low she once saw a speech therapist, fearing it might be bad for her singing.
Ms. Fleming has said that it’s unlikely she will ever be poisoned or strangled to death in real life (or become a Rusalka-like mermaid, for
that matter) but that “playing out the Marschallin’s grief, her fears and finally, her heartbreaking dignity — those are the moments when I feel most exposed.”
If Ms. Fleming has a model besides Leontyne Price, it’s surely Beverly Sills.
She plans to give more concerts (which, though she didn’t say so, are both easier
and far more lucrative than singing staged opera), make more records, find new music to sing, and spend more time at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where she was named creative consultant in 2010.
