Soprano Renée Fleming remains down to earth despite her diva status

World-renowned soprano Renée Fleming is a major diva — onstage. Meaning that when she performs, whether it’s in a full-blown opera or as part of a more intimate affair — like her program with celebrated pianist Evgeny Kissin on May 14 at Symphony Center — she commands, almost demands, your attention.

Offstage, though, it’s another story. “It’s been my observation that it must be a personality or character issue,” she said during a recent conversation ahead of her recital here, organized by Symphony Center Presents and Lyric Opera of Chicago, with Fleming and Kissin in works by Schubert, Liszt, Rachmaninov and Duparc. “Because some people respond to success by changing their behavior, and some people don’t. And I’m one of those people who doesn’t.

“It just never occurred to me to behave differently. I was glad that things were going well, but I also realized that there’s life on the other side, and that you’d better have your personal life in order as well. The word ‘diva’ is sort of a form of ‘god’ or ‘goddess’ — you’re worshippable. But offstage, I find it’s just really unattractive. I’ve seen it in action.”

Still, Fleming quipped, “Part of me wishes that I would have had that bad behavior, because then I could be the subject of dinner discussion. People like to have something to talk about. But it just wasn’t meant to be.”

Instead, people talk about her music and her artistry — not a bad trade-off. Never content to coast on the classics for which she’s most widely known (many are included in a recently released album of her greatest Met performances), Fleming is a champion of new repertoire.

“I’ve always loved new music, and I’ve done a ton of it,” said Fleming, whose latest recital disc, “Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene,” featuring songs by contemporary composers Reynaldo Hahn, Nico Muhly and Kevin Puts, won this year’s Grammy Award for best classical solo vocal album. “I just said this to someone on the phone talking about young artists: Your success is created by your ability to sing the standard repertoire extremely well under pressure in major opera houses. But that’s evolving right now, because there is so much new music. In my career, new works were few and far between, so I’m glad that’s changed. Because, frankly, I think audiences have kind of stepped up and said, ‘We don’t want to see the same thing 20 years in a row.’ ”

As they have been since she launched her professional career four decades ago, reviews continue to be glowing. In one of many examples, a write-up of Fleming’s concert last April at London’s Royal Festival Hall (headlined “With a voice largely untouched by time Renée Fleming leaves her adoring London audience wanting more”) declared that “the still youthful sheen and power of Fleming’s voice was undeniable in her captivating accounts of the ‘Willow Song’ and subsequent ‘Ave Maria’ from Verdi’s Otello. The former was a sorrowful lament but with a hint of steely resolve in the face of death she knows is coming, and her prayerful, heart-wrenching ‘Ave Maria’ culminated in a long-held plangent final ‘Ave.’ ”

Whereas many singers trade vocal range for so-called character as they age, that’s not the case for Fleming, now 64. “I’ve been really fastidious about taking care of my voice,” she said. “I had phenomenal training. And the training that I had was based on best practices from centuries of singers, which had a lot to do with being able to maintain your voice. There’s a [tendency] for our voices to become heavier, darker, to lose range, and it takes training and discipline to counteract that. A lot of it is also the choices you make in terms of repertoire, not singing things too soon that could be detrimental and shorten your career. So I feel like I’m now an example for how that works.”

An artistic fixture in Chicago owing largely to her long partnership with Lyric Opera, where she is now special projects adviser, Fleming is something of a local at heart with a genuine affection for the city whose creative community loves her back — not only for her talent and loyalty, but almost certainly because she’s only a diva onstage.

“I appreciate that about Chicago,” Fleming said. “Everything is done extremely well. And the city is extraordinary for the successes that it has on a regular basis. But nobody makes a big deal about it.”

Just then, Fleming had to take another call. She does, after all, command attention off and on stage.