Renée Fleming is still the reigning grande dame ...Middle East

You know you’re dealing with a proper, old-school opera diva when the soprano’s jewellery gets a credit in the programme. At 66, American soprano Renée Fleming is the reigning grande dame of opera – a name who can sell out the Royal Festival Hall on a school-night with the promise of barely half an hour of singing. (Though it helps when that half hour involves Strauss’s blockbuster Four Last Songs.)

Reports of Fleming’s retirement – touted since 2017, when she sang her last Rosenkavalier at the Met – have been greatly exaggerated, and she has continued to choose her appearances selectively, moving away from the obvious roles and favouring new work. The Strauss was a return to classic territory for a soprano synonymous with the composer’s heroines, a poignant perspective on a work that looks back over its shoulder with a smile before heading into the sunset.

But before we arrive at autumnal sunset, Strauss opens with a final spring – a fragile affair, here. Fleming, often too generously supported by the LPO and conductor Thomas Guggeis, was swept along, caught in the eddying sweeps between notes, snatching at phrase-ends. With each song, however, a little more warmth, a glimpse of that signature Fleming vocal sheen to match her gold earrings. By the time we arrived at the encore performance of “Morgen”, the diva was in focus again: holding an audience in the gentlest and most intimate of musical farewells.

But if most of the crowd were there for Fleming, there must also have been a few curious to see Guggeis’s debut – one of a long list of prestigious firsts this season for the young German conductor whose name is already being coupled with some pretty starry jobs. Reports from Germany and the Met have been exciting, and – with plenty of high-profile Wagner already under his belt – a sequence of the composer’s overtures offered a chance to take his temperature.

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The Royal Opera's Festen is too outlandish - where is the chastity?

Blowing hot and cold, Guggeis gave us a rather choppy Tristan Prelude and Liebestod, emotion blurting early before momentum had a chance to build, ensemble uncertain. His decision to run the openings of Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Meistersinger straight through in a quasi-symphonic sequence was an odd one, though the “slow movement” of Lohengrin finally gave us a blend that had proved elusive earlier, all that gleaming string-led restraint bursting out into the full-body release of Die Meistersinger, wind and brass seizing the spotlight.

Guggeis clearly has plenty to say, but it’ll be nice when he doesn’t feel the need to say it all in every piece.

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