Biography

Renée Fleming returns to the San Francisco Symphony this season as a 2012-13 Project San Francisco artist. Among today’s most lauded singers, she studied at the Juilliard School and holds degrees from the State University of New York at Potsdam and the Eastman School of Music. She won the 1988 Metropolitan Opera National Auditions, and early in her career she was the recipient of the Richard Tucker Award, the George London Prize, the Grand Prix at the International Singing Competition in Belgium, and a Fulbright Scholarship to Germany. Ms. Fleming made her San Francisco Symphony debut in 2002 as soloist in Michael Tilson Thomas’s Poems of Emily Dickinson, a cycle he composed for her. In 2005 she was featured at MTT’s 60th birthday gala. On January 16, she appears here in recital with mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and pianist Bradley Moore.

Last year Ms. Fleming added to her repertory the role of Ariadne in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. She also appeared in the title role of Arabella at the Paris Opera and as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier in Munich. She began the current season as Desdemona in Otello at the Metropolitan Opera and has appeared with orchestras across the country. She is featured at Carnegie Hall and the Lyric Opera of Chicago in André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire playing Blanche DuBois, a role she created in the world premiere at the San Francisco Opera in 1998. In June she returns to Vienna as the Countess in Richard Strauss's Capriccio. Other highlights this season include appearances at the inaugural concerts of Christian Thielemann as Principal Conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle and Yannick Nézet-Séguin as Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as recitals in Paris, Geneva, London, Vienna, Beijing, Taipei, and other major cities.

In 2010, Ms. Fleming won her third Grammy award for Verismo, an album of rarely heard Italian arias. Also that year, Decca released Dark Hope, which features Ms. Fleming covering songs by indie-rock and pop artists. More recently, she recorded Alexandre Desplat's “Still Dream” for the soundtrack of the film Rise of the Guardians. Her 2012 release, Poèmes, has just been nominated for a Grammy for Best Classical Vocal Solo. An advocate for literacy, Renée Fleming was honored by the New York Public Library as a Library Lion in 2004 and has been featured in promotional campaigns for the Association of American Publishers and the American Library Association. Her book, The Inner Voice, was published by Viking Penguin in 2004. Portraits of her have been created by Chuck Close, Robert Wilson, and Francesco Clemente. Her numerous awards include honorary membership in the Royal Academy of Music, the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, the Victoire d’Honneur, the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, and Singer of the Year 2012 by the German Echo awards. In 2010 Ms. Fleming was named the first-ever Creative Consultant at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. She is curating the creation of an opera based on the bestseller Bel Canto for the Lyric’s 2015-16 season.

For more information, visit reneefleming.com.

(December 2012)