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Since 1967, the national anthem has been sung at the Super Bowl by a boy band and a college a cappella group. It has been belted by a morning-TV host and bugled by a trumpeter (four times!).
But when the renowned soprano Rene Fleming makes the arduous climb to the high note in the land of the free at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on Sunday for a projected television audience of 100 million or more, it will be the first time the anthem has been performed at the event by an opera singer.
When Luciano Pavarottis rendition of Nessun Dorma from Puccinis Turandot became the theme song of the BBCs coverage of the 1990 World Cup, Ms. Fleming said Thursday at a news conference at the Rose Theater in Manhattan, it changed his life, it changed his career.
Though not an aria, The Star-Spangled Banner could at the least enhance her name recognition as her career moves in a new direction helping mastermind programming at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Yet the recent news that Ms. Fleming would perform left some unconvinced, Im sorry to report. Asked by a reporter what he thought of an opera singers getting the gig, the rapper French Montana gave an answer that featured two unprintable words with that between them. A Fox Sports writer suggested betting on how long Ms. Flemings rendition would last, explaining that opera singers usually take a long time singing anything because it seems they love the way they sound and want everyone to experience their sound for as long as possible.
Mark Quenzel, who as the senior vice president for programming and production at NFL Network was involved in the selection of a singer, insisted he was unconcerned about any doubters. I care much more about what people are saying about Rene Fleming coming out of the anthem than going in, he said in a phone interview this week.
There are plenty of stereotypes in this country about opera, the duration of a high note being just one. And while Ms. Fleming, one of the most celebrated opera singers of the day, has performed at a presidential inauguration and at the World Series, the Super Bowl is a whole new ballgame for a figure who remains not quite a household name on the level of Pavarotti. So its worth taking the opportunity to clarify a few things about opera and its American history.
Once upon a time in this country, about 100 years ago, opera was a genuinely popular art form. The first sound recording to sell a million copies was the tenor Enrico Carusos version of Vesti la giubba, the sad-clown aria from Leoncavallos Pagliacci, early in the 1900s. And far more recently, stars of the genre like Beverly Sills and Pavarotti were genuine celebrities, recognized in airports and even, in Sillss case, a guest host on The Tonight Show.
Back in the days when divas and divos reigned nationally, there was another category of artists who blurred the line between opera and pop music. Mario Lanza, for one, had the chops to be the real deal but ended up best known for standards like Be My Love and for playing Caruso in films.
But as the art form has receded from mainstream pop culture, all thats left for many people when they think opera are post-Lanza crooners like Andrea Bocelli or the men of Il Divo. They have sweet, tiny voices without the technique or stamina let alone nuance to persuasively project without amplification in a real opera house.
Ms. Fleming, 54, is not Mr. Bocelli. Shes not Paul Potts or Susan Boyle, two of the pseudo-stars unearthed by the TV show Britains Got Talent, either. She is a very serious, very good opera singer who has been at her plush, wistful best in lyric roles like the Marschallin in Strausss Der Rosenkavalier and Tatiana in Tchaikovskys Eugene Onegin.
But when it comes to mass-market stardom, Ms. Flemings career, which took off in the late 1980s, may have arrived a couple of decades late. She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera less than a year after the Three Tenors (Pavarotti et al) sang together for the first time in Rome on the eve of the 1990 World Cup final. And that was the beginning of the end of the era of truly serious opera singers who were also truly famous.
Ms. Fleming remains the closest thing opera has to an American sweetheart the peoples diva, her marketing materials call her. Befitting an era in which would-be divas need to take what they can get, shes game for most anything. She recently sang the Top Ten list on the Late Show With David Letterman, making jokes about twerking and 2016 presidential contenders to the tunes of famous arias. In 2010 she released Dark Hope, a well-meaning, lugubrious album of (sigh) indie-rock covers.
That project, and crossover collaborations with musicians like the jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, have rendered her a Michelle Obama type, a cool mom with a glamorous side: a June Cleaver who wants to also be a Vogue cover girl, as the writer Seth Colter Walls once memorably put it on the blog The Awl.
Her demographic appeal, then, is clear even if she lacks the name recognition of other anthem contenders. Mr. Quenzel was careful to mention that the number of women who watch the Super Bowl outstrips the total audience for the Grammy Awards.
Which is not to say that any audience she may draw on Sunday would be entirely new, or that opera and football fans cant be the same thing. Mr. Quenzel said that engaging Ms. Fleming was first proposed by Bill Creasy, the television producer for the first two Super Bowls and a longtime operagoer. Charles Ruff, one of President Bill Clintons lawyers during his 1999 impeachment trial, was happiest working in his office on Sunday afternoons, with a football game on mute and opera on the stereo.
It makes sense: There is something more operatic about football with its blood-and-guts physicality and raucous end zone celebrations than baseball, a calmer, more genteel sport with which opera performers have been more closely associated. (Yankee Stadium audiences heard the great baritone Robert Merrills version of the national anthem for decades, and the team still occasionally plays a recording of him before games.) Still, Ms. Flemings artistry tends to be more in line with the decorous ballpark tradition than with the ground and pound of the football stadium. She will probably offer the Super Bowl audience the same thing that she has long offered audiences at the Met and elsewhere: the side of opera thats comfortable rather than galvanic, eager to please rather than awe-inspiring.
Ms. Fleming certainly has had her moments of what opera fanatics call dementia, the highest praise for an inspired performance. If those who watch her on Sunday are tempted to buy a Fleming album, theyll hopefully consider not just her latest compilation, the prettily inert Guilty Pleasures, but rather the 1993 recording of one of her most daring triumphs, the title role in the Rossini rarity Armida. Or the DVD of a 2007 Met performance of Eugene Onegin in which she sings and acts with passionate commitment. Those are the performances that can move an audience of millions.
Well see: There is evidence that even the skeptics might be prepared to keep an open mind. After his initial expletive-laden reaction, Mr. Montana went on in a gentler vein: Opera? Nah, I think its a beautiful thing, trying something different.
A version of this article appears in print on February 1, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Finally, Real Diva in Lineup for Game.
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