Leading soprano Renee Fleming bids adieu to signature role

Opera superstar Renee Fleming bid adieu Saturday to one of her trademark roles, performing Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” for the last time before a warm and enthusiastic crowd at the Metropolitan Opera in a sold-out matinee.

Fleming beamed from the stage and patted her heart in gratitude to the cheers at the finale of Strauss’s bittersweet comedy as confetti shimmered to the stage from above.

Fleming, 58, often considered the leading American soprano of her generation, plans to continue to sing in concert and some staged opera.

But she has retired many of her signature opera roles, saying she is excited about new singing challenges and that she feels it is time to move on from playing women decades younger who comprise most of the possibilities for a lyric soprano in the opera repertoire.

Fleming is not on the Met schedule for 2016-7, but a Met spokeswoman said she will be back in the 2018-9 season.

In “Der Rosenkavalier,” Fleming was cast as the wife of a field marshal in Vienna high society in the early 20th century who turns away a much junior lover, sensing that it is only a matter of time before he rejects her for a younger woman.

An emotional high point occurs at the end of the first act when Fleming, whose character is called the Marschallin, ponders the passage of time and imagines herself as an old woman.

“Everything fades away like mist and dreams,” she tells the young lover Octavian, shortly before she sends him away.

Fleming has praised the character as one of opera’s most fully developed for a woman.

“There is so little repertoire in the classical literature that has anything to do with women who are really fully drawn, who have the complexity and the challenges that they truly face,” she told foreign media agencies last year.

“So often in opera, women are symbolic and sort of archetypal and mostly very young, mostly victims,” she said.

Raised in Rochester, New York, and the daughter of two music teachers, Fleming has attained unique stature within opera, enjoying rare crossover appeal among the general public and a nickname as “the people’s diva,” a testament to a combination of glamor, talent and a touch of grittiness.

She sang the “top 10” list for former late-night host David Letterman in 2013 and won praise for her rendition of the national anthem at the 2014 Super Bowl.

That prominence has made Fleming a reliably bankable star, a status on full display with “Der Rosenkavalier,” one of the Met’s most highly anticipated new productions of 2016-7, a season that commemorates 50 years at Lincoln Center.

Five of the nine Met performances of “Der Rosenkavalier” completely sold out and the run as a whole reached 98 percent capacity, making it the best attended Met opera of the season, a Met spokeswoman said.

Besides “Rosenkavalier,” Fleming’s other signature parts include Dvorak’s “Rusalka,” Tatiana in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” and Desdemona in Verdi’s “Otello.” She has appeared nearly 250 times at New York’s premiere opera house in 22 roles. She has also sung in all of the world’s major opera houses including Milan, London and Paris.

A representative for Fleming said the diva “does not like to be a repeater” and has already performed most classic roles for which her voice is suited.

Fleming has increasingly shown an interest in fresh works, seeking newly composed pieces that befit a grown woman.

Throughout her time on stage Saturday, Fleming’s voice revealed a combination of lightness and richness, especially near the end of act one and in a trio near the finale of the opera with Octavian and Sophie, the younger woman whom Octavian falls for. Fleming acted with understatement and reserve that lent weight to the sense of melancholy at the passage of time.

While the Strauss opera worked thematically as a kind of not-quite-sendoff for Fleming from the Met, it did not include obvious applause lines for the audience to express its appreciation during the performance.

The Met crowd on Saturday however made up for that with a standing ovation for Fleming at the end.