“The People’s Diva,” “America’s Soprano,” “The Beautiful Voice, ” “la Grace Kelly della lirica”—in her busy and seemingly interminable career Renée Fleming has worn almost as many hats as hair colors. But henceforth she must also be known as “The Peggy Olson of the Windy City” thanks to her inestimable leadership in crafting Lyric Opera of Chicago’s latest marketing strategy.

From an LOC press release:

LONG LIVE PASSION
Lyric Opera of Chicago rolls out
bold advertising campaign for new season and new era,
inviting new audiences to explore grand opera

Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new campaign of bold images and sassy, thought-provoking slogans will be splashed all over the city starting September 10. Anyone who thinks opera isn’t for them may well think again after seeing these messages.

Working with the innovative advertising and communications agency Downtown Partners Chicago, Lyric shakes up the stereotypes and with a campaign that presents opera as a thrilling live entertainment option that takes audiences where no screen can.

Lyric’s witty new ad campaign is funded though the Renée Fleming Initiative, which launched last December when the superstar soprano became Lyric’s first-ever creative consultant. The campaign will continue through early 2012.

Ads will appear throughout the Chicago metropolitan area on Red Star Outdoor billboards and JCDecaux street furniture, as well as in selected print publications, and digitally via major internet advertising services. Web ads will take users to entertainingly offbeat videos.

. . . .

Images of Fleming and of Sir Andrew Davis, Lyric’s music director, are central to the campaign. Also featured are images of sultry soprano Alyson Cambridge, who has leading roles at Lyric this season in The Tales of Hoffmann and Show Boat; and “heartland heartthrob” baritone Nathan Gunn, the leading man in Show Boat.

. . . .

“It’s an engaging, tongue-in-cheek campaign that speaks to the power of opera,” says Fleming. “It’s bound to pique people’s curiosity about what goes on inside the Civic Opera House. It helps debunk some of the stereotypes about our art form and encourages people to come and experience opera for themselves.”

La Cieca invites our Chicago parterre contingent to share with us photographs of said “bold images” and “sassy, thought-provoking slogans,” as well as links to the “entertainingly offbeat videos”—purely for serious discussion purposes, of course.