Biography

In repertory spanning from Vivaldi to Mozart to Thomas Adès, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard has appeared on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna State Opera, Paris Opera, Salzburg Festival, Bavarian State Opera, Carnegie Hall, Glyndebourne Festival, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and San Francisco Opera in roles such as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Angelina in La Cenerentola, Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, Charlotte in Werther, Blanche de la Force in Dialogues des Carmélites, Costanza in Vivaldi’s Griselda, the title roles in La Périchole and Der Rosenkavalier, as well as Sesto in both Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and Handel’s Giulio Cesare.  She has appeared with leading orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, and the Vienna Philharmonic, among others. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in 2013 and was last heard here as Claire in Bernstein’s On the Town in 2016. Ms. Leonard can be heard on Grammy award-winning recordings of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges with Seiji Ozawa on Decca and Thomas Adès’s The Tempest from the Metropolitan Opera on Deutsche Grammophon.  Recipient of the 2013 Richard Tucker Award, Ms. Leonard is also on the Board of Trustees at Carnegie Hall. She has joined the supporters of the Prostate Cancer Foundation to lend her voice in honor of her father who died from the disease. 

(September 2017)