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Look What You Get To Wear When You’re A Real Diva | It’s like you’re in the fuckin’ opera every day!

Renée Fleming
Sep. 11 (7:30 pm). Winspear Centre (#4 Churchill Square). Tickets: $50-$250, available at the Winspear box office (428-1414)

Whether you hear it on eTalk or at work, the word “diva” gets thrown around much too often — and for all the wrong reasons.

“It’s funny how it’s been absorbed into popular culture, definitely” says soprano Renée Fleming. “It literally means ‘goddess.’ To be divine.”

Understandably, Fleming admires divas. Her Grammy-nominated 2006 recording Homage: Age of the Diva was a platform for her to try on many of the arias that made Maria Callas, Lotte Lehmann, and Geraldine Ferrar household names in the golden age of classical music. “It’s the history that fascinates me so much,” Fleming says. “Exploring repertoire which isn’t currently in vogue and combining them with the spirit of an homage. Learning about an era where [Enrico] Caruso literally had to go to all of these places to be heard. Before CDs, before television, before the Internet.”

Tonight (Thursday), Fleming brings a new program to Edmonton as the featured guest at the ESO’s fundraising gala. While most touring soloists bring the same program to every city, tonight’s program is a collaboration between Fleming and ESO music director Bill Eddins. “I know William from school days,” she says. “In Denver is where we met, I believe. There’s a tremendous variety of orchestral music and song variety, with pieces you don’t often hear, like Richard Strauss’ ‘Four Last Words.’”

Although she’s part of an ensemble on a brand-new recording of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, concert programs like tonight’s gala are Fleming’s biggest challenge right now. “When I’m onstage,” she says, “I hope that people don’t see me as singing at all, that they fall into believing the characters. It’s very demanding but very rewarding, switching gears to present different songs.”

Like many soloists, she got her big break by associated with a signature role — in her case, the lead in Dvorak’s Rusalka. But that was when she was already in her thirties. “It takes a long time for singers especially to develop a career,” Fleming says. “There can be prodigies instrumentally but your voice doesn’t mature until later and you have to develop languages and style depending on what repertoire you choose. It’s a lot of work mastering an instrument that’s subject to involuntary changes.”

But she always knew she was a diva. “I remember a moment when I was very young running to the studio of my voice teacher. I had the results of a review and somebody had written that I had a beautiful voice. I’ll never forget just running there, going and over and over in my head thinking, ‘Somebody said I had a beautiful voice!’”