Soprano Renée Fleming to direct Mozart opera, reimagined for the 1980s

The award-winning opera singer planned to make her directorial debut with a fully staged production of Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte in July, the Aspen Music Festival and School announced Wednesday. The production scheduled performances for July 21, 23, and 26 at the historic Wheeler Opera House during the festival’s 76th summer season. The Aspen Festival is scheduled to kick off July 2 and run through Aug. 24. Its planned theme is “Concerning the Spiritual in Art.”

Her directorial announcement came a week after the celebrated soprano stepped down from her role as the Kennedy Center’s artistic advisor at large. Fleming cited the dismissal of center President Deborah Rutter and Chairman David Rubenstein as her reason for leaving. That came after President Donald Trump was elected chairman of the center’s board of trustees last week and fired several board members over what the White House characterized as their obsession with perpetuating radical ideologies.

What’s Fleming’s creative vision for the opera? Fleming planned to reimagine Mozart’s 18th-century comedic opera as a coming-of-age story set in the 1980s, according to the festival. Fleming specified that the story would take place in the small town of Yarmouth in southern Maine at the beginning of the 1980s wrestling boom.

Lauded as a superstar operatic soprano, Fleming is most widely recognized for her performance of Puccini’s "O mio babbino caro." She has also received five Grammy Awards, a Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Award, and the U.S. National Medal of Arts. Fleming received international notoriety and performed at Queen Elizabeth II’s 2012 Diamond Jubilee Concert, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Norway, and the 2014 NFL Super Bowl.