Renée Fleming has been called America’s diva, which means primarily that her profile as a celebrity is greater than that of most opera singers. In other words, she gets called to do things like sing the national anthem at the first Nationals game, sing at the memorial service at Ground Zero in Manhattan, lead holiday carols at the White House, get interviewed on Letterman, and sing on The Lord of the Rings soundtrack. Lots of people think of her as an American treasure, and she landed in Washington last night with one of her most recent projects, a concert version of Richard Strauss’s lesser-known opera Daphne, from 1938. Considering that we hear through the grapevine that the Washington Daphne was definitively the last time that Fleming will ever sing the role, this was a glitterati event not to be missed.

Happily, DCist was there in the Kennedy Center‘s Concert Hall, which was filled to the brim with opera lovers, Fleming faithful, and other nuts. A security detail announced the presence of one or more VIPs in the audience, presumably Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom we have seen at just about every major classical vocal event we attend in the city. If you missed this one-time performance, you can hear the studio recording of the work, which Fleming released earlier this year with the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln. That group came, with their excellent conductor, Semyon Bychkov, on this tour of three cities with Fleming and some, but not all, of the same cast.

The libretto, by Joseph Gregor, is based on the ancient Greek legend of Apollo and Daphne, the classic tale of boy loves girl, girl loves boy, god also loves girl, god kills boy, god turns girl into a tree. According to the Greeks, Apollo mocked Aphrodite’s son, Eros, who then shot Apollo and Daphne with his arrows, making Apollo love Daphne and Daphne abhor the thought of marriage. The gods transformed Daphne into a laurel tree, which became sacred to Apollo in memory of his first, tragic love.