It may be the biggest unfiring in opera since Maria Callas’s New York comeback: Kathleen Battle, a prima donna whose dismissal by the Metropolitan Opera more than two decades ago made front-page news, will return to the Met next season to sing a recital of spirituals.

The concert, scheduled for Nov. 13, will provide a burst of old-school star power at a time when the Met has been struggling with declining attendance. Arrangements for her appearance came after Ms. Battle, 67, was courted by Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager. “I think great artists should be on the stage of the Met,” Mr. Gelb said in an interview. “There aren’t enough of them.”

Ms. Battle was a Grammy-winning soprano who had appeared with the Met 224 times by 1994, when Joseph Volpe, then general manager, fired her from a production of Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment” a week before opening night, citing, with a bluntness unusual in classical music, her “unprofessional actions during rehearsals.” Stories quickly circulated about what was described as divalike behavior and rudeness toward colleagues, including demands that other singers leave rehearsals when she was singing and not look at her mouth during duets.

Ms. Battle was said to arrive late to rehearsals, leave early or not to show up at all. Nor was “Fille” the first case of her being temperamental: The year before, she withdrew from a Met production of Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” after clashing with the conductor. A few months before that, in a season-opening appearance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, she was said to have changed hotels several times and banned an assistant conductor from her rehearsals.