THOROUGHLY MODERN DIVA

By TERRY TEACHOUT

Anyone who doubts that life is unfair should meet Renee Fleming. She's an international opera star blessed with a warm, creamy, lyric-soprano voice and show-stopping good looks. Signatures: Great Opera Scenes (London), her latest CD, has hit the classical charts. Andre Previn is composing an operatic version of A Streetcar Named Desire especially for her (the San Francisco Opera will give the premiere next season). And as if all that weren't enough, she has two children, sings jazz on the side and is notorious for being...a really nice person.

What's wrong with this picture? Nowadays, nothing. But not so long ago, diva moms were as rare as short NBA stars. Though it wasn't impossible to bring up children between performances (Beverly Sills did it), most big-league women singers assumed that having babies would short-circuit their careers, and chose not to. Similarly, opera stars who sang pop music were invariably condemned for pandering to the proles (Ezio Pinza starred in South Pacific, but only after he retired from the Metropolitan Opera). And according to conventional wisdom, niceness was a luxury ambitious sopranos couldn't afford, moving, as they do, in a viciously competitive environment controlled almost entirely by male conductors, directors and managers.

Fleming, 38, is not the only contemporary classical singer to upend those stereotypes--Dawn Upshaw and Anne Sofie von Otter are also known for being good colleagues, devoted mothers and accomplished pop singers--but she may be the first to combine postfeminist independence with old-fashioned glamour. In person, Fleming comes across as cheerful and unassuming; onstage, she is one of the most vividly expressive personalities ever to take an opera-house curtain call. Appearing this fall in the Met's production of Manon, she bewitched audiences and critics alike with her compelling portrayal of the title character, a teenage girl who escapes from a convent, sets up shop as a courtesan, jilts her wealthy lover, seduces a priest and cuts a wide swath through Parisian high society before crashing and burning in the fifth act. It isn't exactly typecasting, she confesses with an all-American grin, but it's a welcome change of pace from the "pedestal-type women" she usually plays, such as Desdemona (in Otello) and Marguerite (Faust).

The daughter of two music teachers, Fleming majored in music education at the State University of New York at Potsdam and sang at a local nightclub on weekends. When the legendary tenor-saxophonist Illinois Jacquet heard her do You've Changed, he offered to take her on the road with his big band. Instead, she did graduate work at the Eastman School of Music and at the Juilliard School, where she met and married actor Rick Ross, caught the ear of classical-music-business professionals and began her speedy climb to stardom. James Levine, who two years ago led the season-opening production of Otello at the Met that marked her professional coming of age, says Fleming's Desdemona "already ranks with the very best." The late Sir Georg Solti was instrumental in persuading London Records to sign her to an exclusive contract, making her the first American singer signed by the Europe-based label since Marilyn Horne.

Part of Fleming's success comes from dedicated preparation. A passionate fan of Golden Age opera recordings, she listened to 24 versions of Manon while studying for the part. And she is just as devoted to her family, taking her daughters, ages 2 and 5, with her to every engagement. "They both went on their first trips with me when they were about a month old," she says.

Achieving a satisfying balance between work and home is essential to Fleming. "There was a time when singers felt it was an either-or situation," she explains, "but that's not true anymore. Opera companies take my child-care problems seriously. And of course I have something not every singer has, which is an extremely supportive husband." But, then, this thoroughly modern diva does everything her way, from wrapping up her recitals with a group of songs by Duke Ellington to scrupulously avoiding the knife-in-the-back behavior that has given so many top singers a bad name. "I just don't have the energy it takes to get upset and miserable and nasty," she says. "I have to save it for balancing my children, my husband and my career. But I used to think, 'I'm just not mean--I'll never make it! I'll never be a diva!'" Then she giggles, happily aware that in her case, the nice girl finished first.