Renee Fleming (born February 14, 1959) is a leading opera and jazz singer. She was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Rochester, New York. Both her parents are voice teachers. She studied music education at the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York at Potsdam. While at SUNY-Potsdam, she took up singing with a jazz trio in 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 at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and Juilliard.
Fleming's first major break came in 1988 when she sang the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro at the Houston Grand Opera. In 1989, she made debuts with the New York City Opera and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. In 1991, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut. In 1997, Fleming sang her first Manon at the Opéra Bastille to glowing reviews.
As a youngster, Fleming enjoyed popular music and admired the talent of Joni Mitchell and others. In addition to the standard operatic repertoire, she performs new music, Broadway show tunes, and other popular genres.
Fleming sang in the world première of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles with the Metropolitan Opera, in the Lyric Opera of Chicago's first performances of Floyd's Susannah, and as Blanche in the world première of André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire, with the San Francisco Opera.
