Isabel Leonard Has A Lot of Character: Extraordinary Mezzo-Soprano Shares How She Prepares for Her Roles
Isabel Leonard. Credit: Michael Thomas.
Isabel Leonard is a heralded regular at The Metropolitan Opera, one of the most in-demand opera singers with a string of accolades and awards.
She has won several Grammy Awards, including for Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges on Decca (2016) and The Tempest from The Metropolitan Opera on Deutsche Grammophon (2014), both Best Opera Recording, and most recently for Best Classical Compendium for From The Diary Of Anne Frank & Meditations On Rilke in 2021. She is also nominated for the 2022 Grammy for Best Opera Recording for Poulenc: Dialogues des Carmélites. In 2011, she received the Beverly Sills Artist Award in recognition of her performances at the Metropolitan Opera and later the 2013 Richard Tucker Award, given to “an American singer poised on the edge of a major national and international career.”
Equally at home on the concert stage or at the opera house, she has proven her mettle internationally. The mezzo-soprano’s voice has been described as “supple, perfectly controlled, capable of great power, but with a lilt, purity and expressive warmth” by The Washington Post. In her performances, she is commended as much for her flair for the dramatic, her charm, and expressiveness onstage as in her lauded vocal performances. She discusses her approach to fleshing out the larger-than-life characters of opera and suggests how younger audiences can become opera fans.
ISABEL LEONARD SINGING FROM THE START
Isabel Leonard was born and raised in New York City, surrounded by cosmopolitan culture. She recalls her mother listening to opera in the house and always knew she wanted to be onstage.
“I practiced ballet and I sang when I was younger because I enjoyed it. Performing was just a part of my life from the very beginning, but opera was not a part of my life until I got to college. I just knew that I wanted to perform.”
In her youth she sang with the Manhattan School of Music children’s chorus and attended the Joffrey Ballet School. Although she loved dancing, she knew around age 12 that a career as a ballerina was not her path, though she continued to dance as part of her training.Throughout high school at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, she did more musical theater and singing in the jazz band than the classical works for which she is now revered.
“There wasn’t a definitive moment but it was a natural progression of events to study classical music,” Leonard states. “I made the decision to go to Juilliard, because I knew that I would get a solid vocal education and then after that, I would still have the ability to choose what I wanted to do.”
At The Juilliard School, she studied under Edith Bers and completed both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music. During her tenure there, she became the first recipient of the Holman Scholarship and earned the William Schuman Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Music.
Yet, those formative experiences in musical theatre and dance still shape her repertoire and performance styles today. Leonard was delighted to sing as Maria for a semi-staged production of West Side Story with the Philadelphia Orchestra and sang the role of Claire for Bernstein’s classic On the Town in San Francisco with San Francisco Symphony with members of the Broadway cast under musical director Michael Tilson Thomas.
“I've been really fortunate to have such great experiences with these crossover works that are a healthy mix of the two worlds bridging opera and musical theatre.”
She still slips into an occasional early morning dance class at the Met, too.
“It is always a humbling experience to be in that class,” she confesses. “But if anything, it’s just a good reminder to keep moving my body, to try something different, and always to do something that you're not good at.”
OPERA DEBUT & TROUSER ROLES
Shortly after graduating, Leonard made her professional debut as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Bordeaux, France, in 2006, and in January of the following year, she made her U.S. debut as Stéphano in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette at the Atlanta Opera.
“It was shocking,” Leonard shares about her Met debut in 2007 as Stéphano that followed on the heels. “I felt like I hadn't really done much before them, but I was given this great opportunity. Peter Gelb at the time hired me early on. He saw me sing a recital and then he hired me for Stefano and that was it. He invested in me.”
Leonard approached the role confidently, knowing that others believed in her talents and capability.
“I didn't have time to think about whether I was right to do it or not. Somebody thought I was right to do it,” Leonard asserts. “So I couldn’t think too hard on whether I can or cannot because there's really no room for the cannot. I just worked on it and I did it. And that's the way I've approached a lot of challenges and opportunities in life.”
The New York Times raved about her Met debut: “And making her company debut with remarkable aplomb as Stéphano was Isabel Leonard, a young Juilliard graduate who sang with the assurance of one who feels completely at home on the stage, wielding an easy mezzo that went up from an amber-colored lower register to an impressive, sopranolike top. It is hard to make a splash in a pants role in a long opera on a night when Anna Netrebko is singing, but Ms. Leonard did.”
Despite her alluring beauty and her many leading female roles over the years, Leonard’s warm timbre and lower range has led to her adding several other trouser roles to her repertoire, from Sextus in Giulio Cesare to arguably the most beloved trouser role, the randy Cherbubino of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.
While training at Juilliard, Leonard says that she used to observe and mimic the movements of her male classmates to inform some of her physicality but translated into her own body. Dramaturgically minded, Leonard considers the history of the role, the time and place of the setting, and if updated to a modern setting, how all of that affects the depiction of masculine physicality.
Most importantly, she delves deeper into the characters themselves. She approaches these trouser roles by moving away from patriarchal norms of how one appears or acts like a man, and instead focuses on the idiosyncratic and singular aspects of the particular man or boy she is playing.
“What does it even mean to ‘play a man’? When I was first playing Cherubino, my performance wasn't about him being a boy, it was about him. What was he like? He’s impetuous, lovesick, horny. He’s totally manic and those aspects come out in the physicality rather than you thinking, ‘How do I sit like a boy’?”
UNDER HER SKIN
“It’s the psychology of the characters that I find most interesting,” Leonard shares. “The best way to get into a character is when you really feel like you understand them, like you are inside of them. Because then you don't feel like you're putting on anything, you've lived enough kind of in their skin that anything that you do onstage comes out as them and that for me is really it's just an exciting place to be.”
For Leonard, all of her performances involve dedicating the mental and emotional capacity to work through the psychology of her roles. She finds it tricky to work on new music during the run of a show because of this study. This can be a time consuming and emotionally draining process as she begins with a deep research process, invites the character into her life, psychoanalyzes the part and embodies the character, even finding it hard to leave behind certain characters at the end of the performance.
Once she’s mastered the inner workings of her character, Leonard finds that the outcomes of each performance is eerily like the romantic comedy Groundhog Day: “I'm always in this character every night but each is a new night. I'm repeating the same evening, which always goes essentially in the same direction. But within the structure there can be little variations because the character lives fully in the world that they're in.”
Leonard’s psychoanalytic approach may be most apparent in her playing of “Marnie” from the opera of the same name, composed by Nico Muhly with Leonard in mind. Adapted from the 1961 novel by Wilston Graham and the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1964 thriller, Marnie focuses on a disguise-switching thief, who once forced into a terrible marriage, must confront the demons of her past. Leonard sang the role in the United States premiere at the Met during her incredibly prolific 2018-2019 season.
“The book was really fascinating. When I read it, she's like a quintessential traumatized person and that affects everything that she does. She was a really fascinating character to play, because I believe ultimately she's a good person simply dealing with adaptive techniques in her life to get through her trauma. I had to believe this to play her,” Leonard states.
She claims that finding the deeper psychology may be more difficult in many roles because “opera often requires you to be a little bit larger than life, and many of them may be caricatures of people, simply operatic.”
Even in a fairytale role like Cinderella, which she performed at the Met in an abridged holiday version of Massenet’s Cendrillon for the winter 2021 season, she finds that there are depths to this archetypal princess, who while overcoming abuse and neglect and longing for escape falls in love with the first man who is kind to her. “It’s whimsical, fun, and lighthearted, but it’s also about finding a place for forgiveness, too.”
Marnie was different, though. “The most interesting things--in the book--are happening in Marnie’s head.” She had to create a physical vocabulary for Marnie of all her little controlled movements, expressions, and gestures to convey her deeper inner turmoil. “And I’m really happy it was recorded on HD so people could see us up close to get those finer details.”
“Marnie really got under my skin,” Leonard admits. “She did her own versions of damage to me, which was also kind of fascinating. And it took a while to get her out.”
CHILDREN, OPERA, AND SPORTS
Isabel Leonard. Credit: Michael Thomas.
When she’s not performing--and the last several years have continued to see Leonard’s performance schedule becoming ever more full--she spends time with her 11-year old son whom she proudly notes is also very musical. Thinking back on her own childhood exposure to various music and her son’s love of music, too, she is inspired to see opera become more accessible, especially to younger generations.
“I think opera has the ability to reach everyone if directors are thinking creatively and focusing on youth outreach. When you work with young people consistently, that's when you start to see the effect of it years later down the line. That’s how you develop a truly diverse workplace by offering these opportunities to enjoy the performing arts and to cultivate the talents of young artists.”
“But opera is a difficult business model and there are financial restrictions.” That’s why she has an even more radical suggestion. She would love to see the sports world “take a vested interest in the classical music world,” investing in artists and performances. She finds many parallels between the training for both athletes and performers, and in the elevation of both the top athletes and the diva roles. For both professions, she states that the fans find their favorites, too, to lavish attention upon.
“But the problem begins in school, when we tell children they must choose between studying performing arts or playing sports. Children are taught that they can’t do both.”
In an especially endearing outreach to younger opera goers, Leonard appeared on the “People in Your Neighborhood” segment on Sesame Street in 2013, teaching some vocal exercises and singing an aria alongside the Muppets Murray Monster and Ovejita, again comparing her training as an opera singer to that of an athlete.
WHAT’S NEXT?
After her first prima donna role as Rosina in Barbiere di Siviglia at the Met in 2011, a role that has become a part of her extensive repertoire, her star has only grown more incandescent as she has become a mainstay at the Met, while also performing in concerts and opera houses worldwide.
But when it comes to dream roles, the accomplished star won’t name names, but gratefully thanks all those who have supported her journey.
“People always ask that and I never have a good answer. I really like the work that I'm doing when I'm doing it,” she says. “I've been so fortunate that I have worked really hard, have had great guidance and people supporting me along the way, and people investing in my career along the way. I've done so many amazing roles so far and I have some new ones that are coming up, too. There’s a great library of roles and I'm just happy to do the next job.”
Even more importantly, she continues to champion making projects that are accessible and enjoyable by all.
“Let's find some new Spanish songs to sing and do them in a different way and let's collaborate with people that are not in the opera world.”
Leonard’s enthusiasm is unbridled and catchy as she continues to speak about the future of opera.
“Let’s keep creating works that are exciting and accessible, so that the audience can really experience something wonderful and fun. For me, that's what this is all about.”
