Renée Fleming

The four-time Grammy Award-winning American opera singer Renée Fleming was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania in 1959 and later grew up in New York. She won a Fullbright Scholarship which enabled her to study in Europe where she was mentored by Arleen Augér and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Upon her return to America she began singing in jazz clubs to pay for further tuition at New York's renowned Juilliard School. Whilst still a graduate student she started performing with small opera companies appearing at some of the smaller US concert venues.

Her major break came at the age of 29 when she won the prestigious Metropolitan Opera Auditions. With her career on the rise Fleming began to make appearances at major opera venues around the globe including Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and Carnegie Hall. As well as being regarded as one of the world's premier sopranos, Fleming is happy to make forays into other genres and has recorded chansons, jazz and even rock music performing with artists as diverse as Julian Lloyd Webber and Joe Jackson. Her 2010 album 'Dark Hope' contains covers of songs written by a variety of artists including Leonard Cohen and Jefferson Airplane.