Three productions at the Metropolitan Opera. Recipient of the Richard Tucker Award. A Carnegie Hall Recital Debut. An appearance on Sesame Street. Those are but a few of the accomplishments of opera singer Isabel Leonard during the 2012-13 season.
The singing-actress, referred to as a "rising star" by the New York Times, has enjoyed a successful career for many years. But her achievements this season have been a firm stamp of "affirmation" on her career.
"It's a huge affirmation of what I do in my work. It's really a great honor," Leonard told Latinos Post during a phone interview about winning the Richard Tucker Award. The accolade named after the renowned American tenor is often referred to as the "Heisman Trophy of Opera" and is given annually to an opera singer at the "threshold of a major international career." Leonard has already passed that international threshold and has made appearances in Glyndebourne, Vienna, Toronto, Salzburg and Bordeaux over the last two years. In August, Leonard will head to Matsumoto City, Japan for a double bill of two Ravel operas with legendary conductor Seiji Ozawa.
So how did the singer learn about winning the prestigious award? Leonard revealed that it was an early Sunday morning and she was home in her New York residence. Her mother, who also lives in New York, called to let her know that Barry Tucker, son of the noted tenor and President of the Richard Tucker Foundation, had called and wanted to speak with her. Leonard got in touch with Tucker and promptly received the news.
"It took me by surprise. Completely out of left field. I wasn't expecting it at all," she admitted.
Leonard's artistic journey started from an early age. Her father engaged in the visual arts on the side while her mother was an avid opera lover. Leonard notes that her mother used to take her to the Met when she was a child and even took singing lessons with opera legend Eleanor Steber for the pleasure of engaging in the art form.
Leonard started off as a student at the Joffrey Ballet School before becoming a member of the Manhattan School of Music Choir.
"I knew since I was a little girl that I wanted to be in the theater," she said. "I knew I was going to be in some facet of the theater."
Leonard eventually made her way to Julliard where she got the bulk of her vocal training under the tutelage of Edith Bers. From there, she became the recipient of a plethora of awards including the Marilyn Horne Foundation award (2005), the 2006 Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation Award, and the 2006 "Movado Future Legends."
Her success led her to a Metropolitan Opera debut in 2007 as Stéphano in Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette."
"For me it's the theater I've seen growing up. I've seen it my whole life," said Leonard about the Met's importance in her life. "It has its own iconic presence. It's a wonderful place for me to be in."
Since her debut on the historic stage, the opera star has sung there every season. This fall, Leonard got to engage in a unique opportunity that few opera singers ever get: she made her role debut as Miranda in Thomas Ades' "The Tempest" at the Metropolitan Opera under the baton of Ades himself.
Leonard marveled about being able to work closely with the composer and get feedback on his musical and artistic intentions.
"He was so nice. If I had written a new work I would probably be a stickler that the singers get all the words right and get all the music right," she noted. "But he was so kind and so gentle with us and the million mistakes that we made all the time.
"I was so grateful for him and his patience. He wrote an incredibly brilliant score. It was a great experience to work with somebody where you could say 'Is this what you want?' and really mean it," she added.
One month after taking on "The Tempest," Leonard got to make another debut of sorts on the Met stage. This time, she sang her familiar role of Rosina from Rossini's "The Barber of Seville;" however, she sang the opera in English for the first time ever rather than in the original Italian. Not only did the adaptation require a new language, but the new edition also contained a number of musical cuts to decrease the running time of the opera to family-friendly proportions.
"It was really complicated learning it," she admitted. "It was heavily cut. For a long time, your brain goes in one musical direction and then you have to constantly remind yourself to stop. It was a challenge to make the English singable especially when the Italian is so well ingrained in your muscle memory."
She added, that "when we started rehearsal I thought I was going to flip into Italian. But once you rehearse these things. It's quite rare to flip into the others. I don't recall anyone of us flipping into the Italian."
Once her run of "Barber" ended, Leonard flew to Toronto for yet another major debut. This time she took on the role of Sesto in Mozart's "La Clemenza Di Tito" with the Canadian Opera Company. After the final performance of "Tito" on Feb. 22, Leonard commenced a recital tour that took her through five US cities including South Bend, Boston, San Francisco and Atlanta. The tour came to a climactic end with a recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. Leonard noted that she had sung at the concert hall on a few previous occasions, but the performance on April 9 represented her formal debut as a soloist.
For her big concert Leonard chose to move away from classic Italian, German, and French repertoire and opted for musical choices that represented her American-Argentine heritage. The program featured a wealth of music from such composers as Manuel De Falla, Federico Garcia Lorca, Enrique Granados, Jennifer Higdon, William Schuman, Glen Roven, Charles Ives, and many more. The first half of the recital was dedicated for Spanish music while the second featured American songs.
"I wanted to choose a program that reflected who I was in some way. I wanted to sing more of the Spanish repertoire I had already started pursuing and I wanted to sing a whole half of American composers as well," Leonard explained. "I didn't want to create another academic recital. I just wanted to sing what I enjoyed. I wanted it to be fun. I wanted it to be me. I think it took a lot of courage to put together a program where the music really reflected things that I have been through and understood in my life and to put it out there."
This Saturday, May 4, Leonard made yet another role debut at the Met Opera - this time as Blanche in François Poulenc's "Dialogues des Carmelites."
"Blanche is an incredible role in an incredible opera. I keep finding new interesting things about her as a character and her relationships. It's just up my alley in that I love the theater and I love the theater of opera," she noted. "I love that this is called the dialogue of the Carmelites and not just the singing of the Carmelites. It is about their communication, one with the other. The development of their relationships. It's fascinating."
Her ascension in the opera world garnered the attention outside of the opera house when she was given the opportunity to record a segment for Sesame Street this spring. Leonard explains that she got a call from the Met's Peter Clark last summer and he explained that the Sesame Street production team was looking for a singer. Leonard flew out of Glyndebourne on a Thursday after a rehearsal and arrived in New York at midnight. The following day, she shot the clip and then flew back to England that evening. She made rehearsal the following day.
"It was a very quick trip and it was so much fun," Leonard said.
When Leonard is not singing opera around the world, she is engaging in what she calls her other full-time job: motherhood. Leonard admitted that taking care of her two-year old son Teo (he turns three this month) and managing her international career was "an organizational challenge. "
"I am always making sure that he is taken care of," she added. "I have two fulltime jobs now and they are equally difficult and equally rewarding."
So what does the future hold for Leonard? The singer noted that she wants to further explore the repertoire she has recently debuted, but acknowledged that her path will take her through some obscure Rossini operas.
She also noted an affinity for modern opera. In 2015, Leonard will premiere composer Jennifer Higden's opera "Cold Mountain" in Santa Fe. The opera is based on the novel "Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier, which was also adapted for the screen by late director Anthony Minghella.
"I want to get more involved in the process and the development of new pieces and new works because I think it is so important for us culturally to continue cultivating the art form," she remarked. "There are a lot of composers who write brilliant compositions and they might not necessarily really know how to write for the human voice. And I think that rather than keeping everyone at a precious distance because we think everyone's an artist and we shouldn't trample on their toes, I want to be involved with people who want to collaborate, who want to tear the page out of the opera score that they wrote because it doesn't work and rewrite it. I want to get into the nitty-gritty of these things. And start recreating life onstage with brilliant people."
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