Background and career
Renée Lynn Fleming (born February 14, 1959) is an American soprano and actress, known for performances in opera, concerts, recordings, theater, film, and at major public occasions. A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Fleming has been nominated for 18 Grammy Awards and has won five times. In December 2023, she was one of five recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors. Other notable honors have included the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur from the French government, Germany's Cross of the Order of Merit, Sweden's Polar Music Prize and honorary membership in England's Royal Academy of Music. Unusual among artists whose careers began in opera, Fleming has achieved name recognition beyond the classical music world. Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice. She has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano operatic roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. A significant portion of her career has been the performance of new music, including world premieres of operas, concert pieces, and songs composed for her by André Previn, Caroline Shaw, Kevin Puts, Anders Hillborg, Nico Muhly, Henri Dutilleux, Brad Mehldau, and Wayne Shorter. In 2008, Fleming became the first woman in the 125-year history of the Metropolitan Opera (the Met) to solo headline a season opening night gala. Conductor Sir Georg Solti said of Fleming: "In my long life, I have met maybe two sopranos with this quality of singing." Beyond opera, Fleming has sung and recorded lieder, chansons, jazz, musical theatre, and indie rock, and she has performed with a wide range of artists, including Luciano Pavarotti, Lou Reed, Wynton Marsalis, Paul Simon, Andrea Bocelli, Sting, John Prine, Joe Jackson and Dead & Company. A 2018 Tony Award nominee, Fleming has acted on Broadway and in theatrical productions in London, Los Angeles and Chicago. Fleming has also recorded songs for the soundtracks of several major films, two of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture (The Shape of Water and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King). Fleming has made numerous television appearances, and she is the only classical singer to have performed the US National Anthem at the Super Bowl. In July, 2025, she made her directing debut with a production of Mozart's Così fan tutte at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Fleming is a prominent advocate for awareness of the impact of music and the creative arts on health and neuroscience, winning a Research!America award for Impact on Public Opinion. In May 2023, Fleming was appointed by the World Health Organization as a Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health. In 2024, she launched the Renée Fleming Neuroarts Investigator Awards in partnership with the NeuroArts Blueprint Initiative at Johns Hopkins University and the Aspen Institute. Presented annually, the grants fund interdisciplinary research by early career scientists in collaboration with arts practitioners. In April 2024, Penguin Random House published Fleming's anthology Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness. In January 2025, Fleming was appointed as an inaugural member of the World Economic Forum Global Arts and Culture Council.
Fleming was born on February 14, 1959, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, the daughter of two music teachers. She has great-grandparents who were born in Prague and later emigrated to the US. She grew up in Churchville, New York and attended Churchville-Chili High School. She studied with Patricia Misslin at the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Potsdam, and graduated with a Bachelor of Music Education in 1981. While at SUNY Potsdam, Fleming took up singing with a jazz trio at Alger's, an off-campus bar. The jazz saxophonist Illinois Jacquet invited her on tour with his big band, but she chose instead to continue with graduate studies with voice teacher John Maloy at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, from which she received a Master of Music in 1983. She portrayed Zerlina in Eastman's 1982 production of Don Giovanni led by conductor David Effron with a cast that also included Gene Scheer as Leporello and Mark Thomsen as Don Ottavio. As a student, Fleming spent several summers at the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), where she studied with Jan DeGaetani and was directed by Edward Berkeley. She appeared in the role of Anne Sexton in Conrad Susa's Transformations (1983); gave her first performance as Countess Almaviva in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (1984), the role in which she later made most of her major opera house debuts; and sang the role of Anne in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (1987). She also performed scenes from Der Rosenkavalier, and the Marschallin in that opera became one of her calling-card roles at opera houses around the globe. She won a Fulbright Scholarship in 1985, which enabled her to work in Europe with Arleen Augér and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. She also studied lieder with Hartmut Höll through this scholarship in Frankfurt, Germany. Fleming then sang at jazz clubs to pay for further studies at the Juilliard School. While at Juilliard, she sang in roles with the Juilliard Opera Center, appearing as Musetta in Puccini's La bohème and the Wife in Menotti's Tamu-Tamu, among others. Her voice teacher at Juilliard was Beverley Peck Johnson. She graduated from Juilliard with an Artist Diploma in 1986, and was among the first recipients of the Richard F. Gold Career Grant in 1987.
Fleming began performing professionally in smaller concerts and with small opera companies while still a graduate student at Juilliard. She sang frequently in the Musica Viva concert series sponsored by the New York Unitarian Church of All Souls during the 1980s. In 1984 she sang nine songs by Hugo Wolf in the world premiere of Eliot Feld's ballet Adieu, which she again performed in 1987 and 1989 at the Joyce Theater. In 1986 she sang her first major operatic role, Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, at the State Theatre in Salzburg, Austria. Two years later she portrayed Thalie, Clarine and La Folie in Jean-Philippe Rameau's Platée with Il Piccolo Teatro dell'Opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her major break came in 1988 when she won the Met Auditions at age 29. That same year she sang the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro in her debut with Houston Grand Opera. She reprised the role the following year in her debut at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, Sputh Carolina. Also in 1989, Fleming made her debut with the New York City Opera as Mimì in La bohème under conductor Chris Nance and her debut with The Royal Opera, London, as Dircé in Cherubini's Médée. She also was awarded a Richard Tucker Career Grant and won the George London Competition. In March 1989 she sang the role of Imogene in Vincenzo Bellini's Il pirata with the Opera Orchestra of New York under Eve Queler.
In 1990 she was once again honored by the Richard Tucker Music Foundation but this time with the highly coveted Richard Tucker Award. That same year she made her debut with Seattle Opera in her first portrayal of the title role in Rusalka, a role that she has since recorded and reprised at many of the world's great opera houses. She also sang for the 50th anniversary of the American Ballet Theatre in their production of Eliot Feld's Les Noces and returned to the New York City Opera to sing both the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro and Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen. She sang the title role in the US premiere presentation of Donizetti's 1841 opera Maria Padilla with Opera Omaha. In addition, she sang the title role in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia with the Opera Orchestra of New York. Fleming's first television appearance came in January 1991, singing the Cherry Duet from Mascagni's L'amico Fritz with Luciano Pavarotti on Live from Lincoln Center. Fleming made her Met and San Francisco Opera debut portraying Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro in 1991. She was originally not scheduled to make her Met debut until the following season, but stepped in to replace Felicity Lott who had become ill. She returned to the Met later that year to sing Rosina in the world premiere of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles. Continuing her progress, she made her Carnegie Hall debut performing music by Ravel with the New York City Opera Orchestra, sang Rusalka with Houston Grand Opera, and made her debut at the Tanglewood Music Festival as Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. 1992 saw Fleming making her debut with Grand Théâtre de Genève in Switzerland as Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte, and she sang the role of Anna in Boieldieu's La dame blanche at Carnegie Hall with the Opera Orchestra of New York and the role of Fortuna in Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione at Alice Tully Hall, as part of Lincoln Center's Festival of Mozart Operas in Concert. Fleming sang the role of Alaide in Bellini's La straniera in a concert performance by the Opera Orchestra of New York; made her debut at the Rossini Opera Festival in Italy in the title role of Rossini's Armida; and debuted with the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the title role of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah. She also gave her New York City solo recital debut at Alice Tully Hall to great acclaim, sang her first Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Met, and performed Alban Berg's "Three Excerpts from Wozzeck and the "Lulu Suite" with the Met Orchestra under James Levine. The same season saw her singing in the world premiere of Joan Tower's Fanfare with Pinchas Zukerman and the Aspen Chamber Symphony and in the world premiere of John Kander's Letter From Sullivan Ballou at the Richard Tucker Awards ceremony. In June 1993, Fleming performed recital pieces at the funeral of the American soprano Arleen Auger at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in New York City. During the 1993/1994 season, Fleming sang her first Desdemona in Verdi's Otello and her first Ellen Orford in Britten's Peter Grimes, both with the Met. During the following summer, she made her debut at the Glyndebourne Festival in England as the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro. In addition, she performed the role of Madame de Tourvel in the world premiere of Conrad Susa's The Dangerous Liaisons. The 1994/1995 San Francisco Opera's season included her Salome in Massenet's Hérodiade. In 1995 Fleming portrayed the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier with Houston Grand Opera; sang in Salomé in Massenet's Hérodiade with the Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall; and sang Rusalka with the San Francisco Opera. Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte with Solti at Royal Festival Hall in London followed, as did a lauded recital at the Morgan Library. A highlight of 1996 was her signing of an exclusive recording contract with the London/Decca label, making her the first American singer in 31 years to do so, the last having been Marilyn Horne. The title role in Rossini's Armida at the Pesaro Festival in Italy also came in 1996. Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte at the Met followed, as did the soprano solo in the Verdi Requiem with Luciano Pavarotti and the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Her debut in the role of Marguerite in Gounod's Faust came with Chicago Lyric Opera, and she sang the role of Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni with the Paris Opera at the reopening of the Palais Garnier with Sir Georg Solti. Solti chose Fleming to be the first recipient of his "Solti Prize", an award given to an outstanding younger singer, and given by the "Académie du disque lyrique" in a ceremony equivalent to the Grammy Awards. That year, Fleming debuted at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany as Eva in Wagner's Meistersinger. Her other performances included recitals at the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland and at Alice Tully Hall. Her first Manon at the Opéra Bastille in France received glowing reviews {{}} in 1997. At the Bastille, she also reprised the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier as well as singing Marguerite in Faust and Rusalka at the Met. Two concert performances occurred: first with the New York Philharmonic, first under Zubin Mehta performing a selection of opera arias; the second singing Mozart's Exsultate, jubilate and three songs of Richard Strauss with Kurt Masur. She appeared at the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and performed Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Orchestra of St. Luke's under André Previn. She gave recitals as well at notable venues such as the Salzburg Festival in Austria. Two title roles were offered to Fleming in 1998: Richard Strauss' Arabella with Houston Grand Opera and Carlisle Floyd's Susannah. Also, there was Countess Almaviva in a landmark production of Le nozze di Figaro at the Met which also starred Cecilia Bartoli, Susanne Mentzer, Dwayne Croft, Danielle de Niese, and Bryn Terfel and which was broadcast on PBS' Great Performances. She made her Carnegie Hall recital debut and sang Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs with Claudio Abbado and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival. and later with the Berlin Philharmonic. She originated the roles of Blanche DuBois in the world première of André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire with the San Francisco Opera in September 1998. 1999 brought appearances at the Bavarian State Opera in Germany as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier and she returned to Carnegie Hall to great success with a concert of German lieder. She also performed in recital with André Previn and made her debut at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany. Fleming's CD, The Beautiful Voice, won her a Grammy Award that year. Performances of two new title roles were given: Handel's Alcina with Les Arts Florissants and conductor William Christie and with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Charpentier's Louise with San Francisco Opera. Fleming closed out the year by performing for President Bill Clinton at the White House for a Christmas celebration.
In 2000, Fleming appeared at the Met, San Francisco Opera and at Covent Garden in England as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier and sang the title role in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia with the Opera Orchestra of New York. She appeared as Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Salzburg Festival and at the Met. She performed with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, under Mark Elder as part of the PBS series Live From Lincoln Center and with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Haydn's Creation under James Levine. In June of that year she sang at the installation of New York Archbishop Edward Egan. As Desdemona in Otello she opened the 2001/02 Lyric Opera of Chicago season, Manon with the Paris Opera, the Marschallin with both the San Francisco Opera and the Met, and Arabella at both the Bavarian State Opera in Germany and the Met. She also sang in Verdi's Requiem twice, once with the London Symphony Orchestra and once with the New York Philharmonic. Fleming also sang at World Trade Center site shortly after the September 11 attacks. Taking a rather different approach, in 2002 Fleming provided the vocals for Howard Shore's soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrack. Her singing can be found in the songs "The End of All Things", "Twilight and Shadow" and "The Return of the King" (Original Soundtrack) and "The Grace Of Undómiel", "Mount Doom", "The Eagles" and "The Fellowship Reunited" (The Complete Recordings). She also sang in several concerts in the United Kingdom with Bryn Terfel and gave the most extensive recital tour of her career, singing in dozens of recitals with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia. In addition, she portrayed the role of Rusalka with Opéra Bastille and Imogene in Bellini's Il pirata with Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Her career at the Met continued in 2003 with Imogene and Violetta in La traviata. She sang the title role in Massenet's Thaïs with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, in addition to Rusalka at Covent Garden and another Violetta with Houston Grand Opera. A reprise of Blanche in Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire took place at the Barbican Centre in London. Met performances continued in 2004, with Fleming portraying Rodelinda in Handel's opera and reprises of Rusalka and Violetta at the Met. She also sang her first Countess in Capriccio at the Palais Garnier and performed in concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra among others. Recitals were given in Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and the United States and performed in several concerts with Elton John at Radio City Music Hall. Her first book, The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer, was published in 2004 by the Penguin Group. Massenet's Manon at the Met, Desdemona in Verdi's Otello at Covent Garden, and Thaïs in Vienna were part of her 2005 repertoire, in addition to concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic (Mahler's Symphony No. 4 and Alban Berg's Seven Early Songs, conducted by Claudio Abbado, and released as a live recording by Deutsche Grammophon), the London Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir among several other ensembles. In 2006, Fleming performed a solo concert at the Lyric Opera of Chicago with Sir Andrew Davis, sang Violetta in La traviata with Los Angeles Opera; returned to the Met to sing both Manon and Rodelinda; and took up Violetta in the Met's touring production to Japan. Several recitals and concerts throughout the United States, Italy, Russia, Sweden and Austria took place, the latter being a celebration of Mozart's 250th Birthday with the Vienna Philharmonic which was broadcast live internationally. She also recorded song cycles with pianist Brad Mehldau, which were released as Love Sublime. Violetta reappeared the following year in Chicago; Tatyana in Eugene Onegin and Violetta were given at the Met; her Arabella was seen at the Zurich Opera, as was Thaïs at the Théâtre du Châtelet, The Royal Opera, London, in concert at the Vienna Konzerthaus, and the Liceu, Barcelona. Performances with over a dozen orchestras, including the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the China Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra where she appeared as a Pennington Great Performers series artist. Additionally, Fleming appeared at numerous music festivals, including the Salzburg Festival and the Lincoln Center Festival and she gave recitals throughout Southeast Asia, Germany, and Switzerland.
On September 22, 2008, Fleming became the first woman in the 125-year history of the Met to solo headline opening night. Fleming performed three favorite roles: Violetta in act 2 of Verdi's La traviata; Manon in act 3 of Massenet's Manon; and the Countess in the final scene of Strauss's Capriccio. The performance was also transmitted live in HD to screens in Times Square. The 2008/09 season resulted in Fleming singing Desdemona and Thais at the Met, the Countess in Capriccio at the Vienna State Opera, Tatyana at the Tanglewood Music Festival, and Lucrezia Borgia at the Washington National Opera. In 2009, Fleming premiered the complete version of Le temps l'horloge by Henri Dutilleux. She sang Violetta at Covent Garden and Rusalka at the Met, the Marschallin at the Baden-Baden Festival, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Met. She sang a variety of short pieces at Napa Valley's Festival del Sole in California. Fleming sang in the opening concert of the 2009–10 season of the New York Philharmonic. The concert, telecast via Live from Lincoln Center, was the first performance of conductor Alan Gilbert as music director of the New York Philharmonic. Fleming performed Olivier Messiaen's song cycle Poèmes pour mi. During the 2009–10 Met season, Fleming sang in Mary Zimmerman's new production of Rossini's Armida, in the first-ever production of the opera by the company. She returned to that role during the Met's 2010–2011 season, along with the Countess in Capriccio. On November 14, 2009, Fleming performed at a concert in Prague organized by Václav Havel to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Czech Velvet Revolution, which also featured Lou Reed, Joan Baez and others. Fleming sang the aria "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka in Czech, and also sang "Perfect Day" in a duet with Reed. In a 2010 Wall Street Journal article, Fleming talked about her view of the battle between opera traditionalists and those who want to reinterpret the standards, siding – with some reservations – with the latter: "I'm not a reactionary. I've loved some of [these productions] when they've been well thought out. I have no problem with edgy, as long as it's not vulgar or disrespectful of the piece." She said her "classic" image meant that she was unlikely to be asked to perform in such productions. In the same interview, Fleming explained her increasing preference for performing in concerts, rather than opera productions, and said, having learned more than 50 operas, that she is unlikely to learn many more. At the Last Night of the Proms in London in 2010, Fleming performed songs by Richard Strauss, Dvořák and Smetana. In December, the Board of Directors of Lyric Opera of Chicago announced that Fleming was named Creative Consultant, a first in the company's history.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
