Lyric names Fleming creative consultant

The Lyric Opera of Chicago board of directors has named Grammy Award-winning American soprano Renée Fleming as the company's first creative consultant. Fleming has also been elected as a co-vice president with Lyric music director Sir Andrew Davis to the Lyric Board.

Already in town for a sold-out subscriber concert on Sunday, Fleming appeared at a news conference Thursday at the Civic Opera House to discuss her five-year consulting term, which begins immediately.

Fleming is set to curate a world premiere opera in the 2015-16 season, plus a new Lyric initiative that focuses on American musical theater (which will launch in 2013 with a postseason production of “Oklahoma!”).

Fleming will also take a leadership role in creating new projects and initiatives designed to increase opera audiences and awareness.

Yet these new administrative duties for Fleming don't mean that she's giving up performing.

She is set to appear in Lyric's concert staging of André Previn's 1998 opera adaptation of “A Streetcar Named Desire” in the spring of 2013, plus a new production of Richard Strauss' “Capriccio” in the fall of 2014.

“I knew this was an extraordinary opportunity,” Fleming said, before acknowledging other great women opera administrators in Chicago like Ardis Krainik, Carol Fox and soprano Mary Garden (who notoriously bankrupted one Chicago opera company in the 1920s).

“Mary Garden and I have a lot in common,” Fleming said. “Repertoire, that is.”