This interview was originally recorded on April 7th, 2016.
The Oral History Project is supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

Isabel Leonard, mezzo soprano

Three-time Grammy Award–winning mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard has appeared on the world’s foremost opera stages, including The Metropolitan Opera, Opéra National de Paris, Wiener Staatsoper, Bayerische Staatsoper, San Francisco Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, and Teatro alla Scala. Renowned for her “in-demand” artistry across opera, concert, and recital, she has earned acclaim in signature roles such as Carmen, Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Angelina (La Cenerentola), Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro), Charlotte (Werther), Blanche de la Force (Dialogues des Carmélites), and Der Komponist (Ariadne auf Naxos). She is also recognized for creating and championing new work, including title roles in Nico Muhly’s Marnie and Gabriela Lena Frank’s El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego. A celebrated concert and recital artist, Leonard has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, and San Francisco Symphony, and enjoys frequent collaborations with guitarist Pablo Sáinz Villegas and tenor Andrea Bocelli.

The recipient of the Richard Tucker Award, Leonard has won three Grammy Awards for recordings with Michael Tilson Thomas, Decca, and Deutsche Grammophon. She has appeared on film and television, including Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, and serves on the Board of Trustees at Carnegie Hall and the Artistic Advisory Board of ArtSmart.

Transcript

Marc A. Scorca: Good evening, welcome to the National Opera Center. I'm Marc Scorca, president of OPERA America, and it is delightful to welcome you to the last of our series in this season's Conversations. Please join me in welcoming Isabel Leonard. I always begin our interviews by asking a simple question: who brought you to your first opera?

Isabel Leonard: My mother, apparently. I don't have any real recollection of the experience, but she says that she took me to see Les Contes d'Hoffmann by Offenbach, when I was eight, and apparently I was very bored, and didn't like it and wanted to leave. So, she holds that against me, begrudgingly, for the last 20-odd years.

Marc A. Scorca: Was it here in New York?

Isabel Leonard: It was most likely at The Met, since I was raised here.

Marc A. Scorca: So, I'll modify the question. Who brought you to the first opera you remember attending?

Isabel Leonard: Me; I think I did. At this point, I don't know if it was the first or not, but I remember going to see Manon with my college boyfriend over Valentine's Day - not very suited for Valentine's, considering the outcome.

Marc A. Scorca: If you leave early, it's very romantic.

Isabel Leonard: If you leave early, before it all goes (indicates downhill), then it's really romantic. But I don't know whether it was the boyfriend, or it was the opera - I'm sure it was a combination of all of the above. But that's also one of the great things about opera, right? It can kind of heighten all the experiences you're in, at the moment. So, I remember that being quite a positive experience.

Marc A. Scorca: And when opera works, it works so well. It's just an amazing thing. It doesn't work often, and we keep the belief in it, because when it works, it works so well. So, the children's chorus at Manhattan School of Music? What brought you to that children's chorus, was that your mother again?

Isabel Leonard: Yes, it was, but this was an absolutely positive experience. I was singing in the children's choir at my school, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and we practiced after school, and we sang for Sunday services. And then my mother decided that it would be good for me to take a so-called sabbatical from the choir, and go to Manhattan School of Music. They were just starting a children's festival chorus under Christine Jordanoff, who was a choir director at Duquesne University. And she taught the Kodály technique to children at the university, and she would commute every Saturday to MSM to teach us. So, I auditioned and I got in as a 10 or 11-year-old, and I sang with them for several years, and that was really the beginning of the rest of my singing career.

Marc A. Scorca: It sounds like your mother had a real commitment to making sure you had a good grounding in the arts.

Isabel Leonard: Yeah, it's very interesting because we have a very complicated relationship, which everybody that knows me knows is very true. However, I would say, despite all the complications, she's been very aggressive making sure that whatever it was I was doing at any given moment was at a hundred percent, that I was in an environment where I would, if I chose to pay attention, then I would learn. And she had found this children's choir, and that worked out really well. I'm sure we'll get to it at some point or another in the conversation, but I started dancing when I was very young, and of course that was her. She's like, "You're gonna take ballet". I fought every year. "I don't wanna go back. I don't wanna go back"

Marc A. Scorca: I did wanna ask you about that, because in your bio you also attended the Joffrey Ballet School, and I was wondering how old you were when you were in the ballet school and how those two intersected for you, singing and dancing.

Isabel Leonard: They didn't so much intersect at the time when I was dancing. I started ballet when I was five or six, around that age; I was little. And I danced in maybe seven or eight years in the school environment. And I was in The Nutcracker at City Center for two seasons, with the company, but as one of the children. So, the first year, in The Nutcracker, I was a Polichinelle doll, so I was in a white muumuu, with little black buttons and super cute and rosy cheeks and everything - I saw the picture of me. I was probably 12, or even 11. And then the following year, I was a boy in the party scene.

Marc A. Scorca: Good practice for your repertoire.

Isabel Leonard: And I always say now, that somebody should have told me then not to complain as much, because, come on, a little girl of 12 does not wanna play a boy; there's nothing okay with that. Absolutely nothing. I was very unhappy. But as I do, even now, by the end of the whole experience, I realized that it was a whole lot more fun, because we got to be obnoxious. We got to run around. We got to pretend to play trumpets and disturb the girls while they were rocking their little dolls to sleep and the lullaby. So, it was, by far, actually the right choice. So, I did that for two years as well; that was really my first experience on stage.

Marc A. Scorca: Did you have youthful nerves about performing? Did you get over nerves early on? Did you find that you were attracted to that stage energy?

Isabel Leonard: To me, the extremes of the pendulum, in terms of emotion, weren't there. I was just sort of in the middle. I wasn't nervous, nor was I this stage brat. I enjoyed it, and when I got out on stage, I was in another world, and it was fun. I'm sure there were some sorts of nerves. I can't tap into that now, even in retrospect. I don't recall whether there were nerves. I recall specific things that happened. I remember one night we were in pairs of twos, and we had to skip along the side of the stage, and somehow there was a cord that had gotten onto the stage from the wings, and the first pair tripped and went down, and like dominoes the rest of us followed. And I remember getting up from that shaking, and probably because I thought my ballet teacher would kill me. Even though it wasn't my fault, but that's what happens in ballet, right? You think your teachers are gonna kill you, because for the most part, you're terrified of your ballet teacher. And so, I thought (high pitched) "That's end of my life". I do remember the feeling of getting up shaking, because we had fallen, and I think I was horrified and embarrassed and then we all scattered off to our ballet parents, 'cause it was the beginning of the party scene, and all the dancers, they were like, (whispers) "Are you okay? Are you okay?" We're like, "Yeah, yeah, fine". "Okay". You know, you're little. What do you know that life happens even on stage?

Marc A. Scorca: Are you a nervous performer today?

Isabel Leonard: No.

Marc A. Scorca: Just go out there and do your job.

Isabel Leonard: Yeah. I would say the only time I'm nervous is if I'm unprepared. I think that kind of goes for life in general. I mean, I'd be nervous if I were unprepared for a test, but definitely if I were to go out on stage feeling anything less than prepared, then there's the nerve, because you think "I'm gonna completely fall apart in front of all these lovely people.

Marc A. Scorca: Rewinding the chronology, there you are at the MSM Children's Chorus, and at what point did someone say, "You know, Isabel, you have a better voice than most of these other kids?"

Isabel Leonard: I don't know if anybody ever said that to me, actually, flat out. I think it became apparent in small, slight ways. If I think back to those years, it became more apparent, in that my friend Melody and I, for example, would be chosen to sing a duet together, or to demonstrate, or to lead a section - those kinds of opportunities I think that teachers will give to young students. It's not saying how great you are, it's by allowing you to lead or to demonstrate you're kind of doing both, but you're giving them that responsibility as well, which I think is a really interesting way of positive reinforcement. I'm into positive reinforcement these days, 'cause I have a 6-year-old, and that's all we talk about at home. I'm like, Miss Positive. It's making me crazy.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, I'm gonna give you positive reinforcement for being so positive. So, you emerged as a leader because people gave you these opportunities to demonstrate and to lead along the way. And then onto Juilliard, and I noted in my questions here that, between MSM Children's Chorus, Joffrey Ballet, Cathedral School of St. John the Divine, went to LaGuardia. So, I guess even before Juilliard, you went to LaGuardia High School for Performing Arts, as a dancer, or a singer?

Isabel Leonard: As a singer. At that point I was done with ballet, "Get me out of ballet".

Marc A. Scorca: Because of the...?

Isabel Leonard: Because I fought against it my whole childhood and my whole youth. And so, when I finally said, the last year that I did it, I said, (using childish voice) "That's it, I'm not doing this again".

Marc A. Scorca: Too regimented, too...?

Isabel Leonard: No, if I think back at the sort of emotional state that I was in, in ballet, I got to a point where I wasn't enjoying it, and I wasn't the physical type for classical ballet. Modern? Maybe. Had I gone to Alvin Ailey as a 5-year-old, maybe I'd still be taking regular classes, but I didn't give up on dance. I just gave up on ballet; I'll be very clear here. And I just decided I was done and stopped doing ballet, and I auditioned for LaGuardia as a singer and as a visual artist, and then I made the choice - my father was a visual artist, so I had a whole portfolio that I put together from school. But I knew that if I were to get in for singing, then I would go for singing. And I said to my parents, "I'll do art on the side", which never happened because teenagers are the worst at time management. But I did a lot of singing and I sang a lot in the choir, and then I was moved up to the Solo Choir, (they called it) and Senior Chorus, by the time I was a sophomore. I was sort of advanced in that regard. And then I did lots of solos and later on I decided I wanted to sing with the jazz band. And again, the lazy side of me is because I didn't wanna do regular music history class, so I took a jazz music history class, and then of course I fell in love and then I sang with the jazz band. It's interesting how these things unfold in front of you.

Marc A. Scorca: And then straight from LaGuardia to Julliard?

Isabel Leonard: Right. And then I went through the whole application process for college, and I applied to NYU and Carnegie Mellon and Oberlin and Juilliard and Barnard - and Barnard and Juilliard have a joint program. And I narrowed my choices down to NYU - to Cap 21 (Collaborative Arts Project 21) actually, their musical theater program. And I spent a day there and I met some of the students at Cap 21, and then I spent a day at Juilliard, and I actually made the decision because of the students that I met at Juilliard. I just clicked with them. For whatever reason on that day, I clicked with the people at Juilliard. And I thought, "Okay, if I'm gonna try this singing thing, I'm gonna go to Juilliard, and I'm gonna learn my technique, and then see what happens from that point on".

Marc A. Scorca: And was it to be a singer, the singing thing, or was it for opera? Were you going for opera?

Isabel Leonard: No, it was just singing. To me, it wasn't opera. I mean, I knew obviously the reputation of Juilliard, of course, and even in high school, all the choir repertoire was classical choir repertoire. We did learn some of the typical Italian art songs that one learns when you're starting out singing. However, I never said I'm gonna become an opera singer. I knew in high school that I was developing in that direction, but it wasn't me saying, "This is what I want". It was, "I want to sing and I want to be in the theater, and now let's see where this takes me next".

Marc A. Scorca: As a mezzo-soprano? Had you identified voice type yet?

Isabel Leonard: No. I sang soprano all through high school. I auditioned at Juilliard as a mezzo 'cause there were fewer of them, and so I just thought, "Hey, why not?"

Marc A. Scorca: And you also play the viola probably, 'cause there're fewer...

Isabel Leonard: I wish. My fingers are useless. I did, honestly, check the mezzo box because there were fewer, but it was the right choice, at least in terms of color, and I am not a high soprano, but I'm not a low mezzo either. I really do sit kind of in the middle, and I sing some soprano rep, some mezzo rep and whatever falls in the middle and whatever people will let me sing.

Marc A. Scorca: It really is a New York story. Born and brought up in New York, and then to all of the educational institutions, including Juilliard. As a young person, did you take advantage of the other cultural opportunities in New York, (although you're going to Joffrey and MSM), did you go to concerts? Did you walk down the street and go to free concerts in the museum?

Isabel Leonard: Yeah, it's interesting growing up in the city, 'cause I have to say that the natural tendency, I think, for anyone in any city is you take for granted that you live in a city that has so much to offer. Especially as a young child that's not gonna walk around the city as a 12-year-old alone, depending on your parents. But that wasn't gonna happen with my parents. So, it wasn't really until college that I had obviously that freedom to do whatever it was that I chose to do. And yeah, particularly with the Symphony, we used to wait outside during intermission of the Phil concerts and wait for people to leave during intermission. (softly) "Excuse me, can I have your ticket?" And some of 'em would give you nasty looks and you're like, (loudly) "I'm a poor college student; I just wanna hear the symphony on the second half. Please, please, please". And they would let us have the tickets. I remember we went to The Rite of Spring one weekend, and that was really fun. We would just try to get into concerts as we could, without having to pay.

Marc A. Scorca: So, when did opera then become clearly the path you wanted to pursue at Juilliard? What happened that turned it to opera?

Isabel Leonard: I dunno. I still think I'm on that path right now. Words and music for me are where my focus goes, and then whatever genre it is a part of is sort of secondary. Not to say that I'm about to sing some rock song, but it's always been the what's happening, the text, the story, the message. And so, I really stumbled into opera by way of being in an institution that teaches mainly classical repertoire. So, in my undergrad, there were so many things to get out of the way that had nothing to do with even the music quite yet. Like language and translation, and just getting your brain around a whole other set of functions that we needed to learn in order to operate. I remember very clearly sitting in my freshman, particularly the diction classes. I think we did Italian diction first, because there are fewer IPA symbols. (IPA is the International Phonetic Alphabet), and they're really symbols. I mean, it's like learning Cyrillic. You're learning a different alphabet that indicates what sounds you have to make in order to pronounce a language correctly, even if you don't understand the language. And I remember being given maybe two to three pieces of paper that had lists of these symbols, and we all looked at each other going, "What is this nonsense? How could I possibly get to a point where this will make sense?" And of course, it does. You know, because we were music dorks, we would write each other notes in IPA. And so, you know, you'd pass a note, and it had all these symbols on it, and so we used to entertain ourselves in rather strange ways that nobody else understands. There was a lot to learn, and of course there was history class. Oh, and then there was ear training. Holy cow. Ear training was astonishing. The first year it was okay. I had come into college. I had been doing theory at MSM, because of the choir there with Christine, and we had started taking theory. So, I was aware that it existed. It's about as good as it sounds. That also took a while. It's like learning strange math. Until it clicks, it doesn't click, and I do remember the day it clicked, thank God. But ear training was a very exciting blast into the past. We used to sit in these little desk cubicles, and we had to stand up and do our recitations for the teacher, who scared us a lot. And we were a small class too. We were maybe six of us, by the time we were seniors. And we all had to sit a seat apart.

Audience Member #1 (00:22:05):

How old were you at this point?

Isabel Leonard: 20? We're all very well behaved in class. And we had to do all these exercises and this scale and that scale; that terrified me. If I was nervous at any point in my life, it would've been every time I walked into ear training.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, even today, 'cause you do recitals, you do opera, you still enjoy jazz. So that you continue to have a kind of mixed bag of singing in your life.

Isabel Leonard: Yeah, and listening too. I mean, I don't sing Lynyrd Skynyrd songs, but I sure do listen to them.

Marc A. Scorca: And the recital work complements your opera work? Does it exist in just a different realm, or do they speak to one another with you as an artist?

Isabel Leonard: I think they do. For me, the other big theme in my life these days is balance, and again, because of my child and everything. And doing recitals and concerts and opera, if you organize it in a balanced way, you find moments of rest in between. Like if I'm doing Cherubino in Marriage of Figaro, that in some ways is a moment of rest for me, because I've done it so many times, and it allows me during intermission to start looking at something new, even though I would probably never look at another piece of music while I'm performing one thing. I just don't have the capability to really switch and focus and I don't like to. But with something like Cherubino, I'll dabble and that'll gimme the time to do something new, to prepare for a recital. And then if there's a recital tour coming up, it's a different amount of energy, because of course, you're on stage the whole time. I know whenever I walk out on stage, I think, "Why on earth do these people wanna listen to me sing for an hour and a half?" I just think "Why? It seems so long". So, I have changed my approach to the recital. Sharon Isbin and I have been doing a recital together, classical guitar and voice, and we have become very chatty in our recitals. I'm sure some people dislike it; I think some people like it. I go with those who like it. You don't like it? Eh, I can't help you. But we've become very chatty, and we just talk about the rep that we're doing. She inevitably forgets something like her little cloth; no, I think she does it on purpose. It's really cute, actually. And so she has to go back out, and I sit there, like, "Well, I have no jokes to tell you". But I've stopped worrying so much about the supposed formalities, about the recital structure. Concerts would be a little different. I think it would be inappropriate if I were singing a C minor Mass and I started talking to the audience. I mean, that just wouldn't happen. But in a recital setting, I think what's most restful for me in that moment is to do me. To just be me. And that's most fulfilling.

Marc A. Scorca: And I think the audience would much rather you be you, than be sort of an imitation of a diva from another era.

Isabel Leonard: And there may be a time and place for it, depending again on the piece, if there's something very serious. It's all tied into the whole evening.

Marc A. Scorca: You went from Juilliard and quickly started to win some competitions. So, as you were experimenting in music and doing ear training, something vocally was happening that enabled you - Marilyn Horne Foundation, 2005; the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation in 2006. These were important positive reinforcement for your career as an opera singer. So, when you completed Juilliard, you were a competitive artist already.

Isabel Leonard: Again, I think in some ways by accident. During my undergrad, everything was quite low key, kind of under the radar, just studying and learning your repertoire and everything. I think by the time I went into my masters, it also became more apparent to me that there was a different atmosphere about this. Like, people were actually looking to make a living, right? And it changes your perspective a little bit on what you're doing, but you're still a student, which is a good thing, and I think, as a student, you should be in a safe environment. It's very important. I don't think that that aspect of 'all of a sudden your life depends on it' should be mixed into your studying time, because the line is very thin and gets stressful. But I did the Puccini Competition, which was an experience. I went in and I sang something and I thought, "I'm never gonna win any sort of major prize here because I'm a mezzo, and unless I knock the socks off of 'Non più mesta', or something, eh, I'll get an honorary mention, which is fine". You kind of know in a way what you're capable of doing, and also what competitions are looking for. This isn't about who's necessarily the most masterful, technical, perfect singer. Sometimes It really is: this is an amazing tenor. He's sung some incredible high notes, and he's gonna win. Not to say that he shouldn't, but it's a different beast. Competitions are a different beast. And I was lucky that Matthew Epstein, who started managing me, when we talked about competitions, he really kind of made me understand, in a positive way, that it was a tool, not much, much, much, much more. So, I did a few of those competitions, and then I was lucky to win the other competitions without having to do anything necessarily, which are the best kinds of competitions to win. And I say that in all honesty, it's lovely to be recognized by your breadth of work, rather than all of a sudden coming out on stage and being critiqued by one aria that you do. I mean, it's like saying to somebody, we're gonna critique you on your whole life based on 10 seconds of you telling me about yourself right now, and it's impossible. It's so difficult. So, like the Beverly Sills Award or the Tucker Award - those are awards that when they present them to you and they say, "This is for all of what you've done so far", that really does mean something, because you can go back and say, "Oh yeah, I have done kind of some cool things up until now".

Marc A. Scorca: Because the Richard Tucker Award is just one of the most important awards in opera, and it does recognize what you've done, but it also acknowledges your potential. It's saying that you may emerge as one of the great singers. Do you feel pressure from an award like the Tucker?

Isabel Leonard: Yeah. I mean, on and off. Not pressure necessarily in a negative way. I hate being cliché, but with great power comes great responsibility, that whole thing. There is something to it. When more and more people invest in you, you have more and more investors to please, or to at least give something back to. They have invested in you, after all. And I think that also ties back into when you're a student being in a safe situation, because when you're not a student any longer, and in some ways your life does depend on it - and now my son's life depends on it as well - it's very easy to let the stress of all of that take over all of the natural things that got you there in the first place. And so again, finding that balance so that you keep centered about it, so that you can continue progressing is very tricky. But then when you have foundations like the Tuckers and all these wonderful foundations who also then, in the heart of the foundations, like Barry Tucker, who's the most loving person, and all these people, they are really there for you also personally. I could call him up on the phone and be like, "Barry, I'm stressed out. I can't do this right now". He'd be like, "Okay, okay. All right. We'll find something else to do". And that's really very, very helpful.

Marc A. Scorca: You never did a young artist program?

Isabel Leonard: No.

Marc A. Scorca: And it is so rare these days that a singer hasn't done St. Louis, Santa Fe, Glimmerglass, Lindemann - name them. But you just went straight from your masters, some competitions to singing. Do you regret not having more of that safe space? You've talked about the safe space of the conservatory. Do you regret not having more of that young artist program safe space? Or are you happy to have skipped that gear?

Isabel Leonard: I don't feel like I missed anything. It was a rapid transition. However, I learn kind of like trial by fire, so putting me to work was a good thing. Because I still do, and even more at that point, 'cause when you're young, adrenaline still gives you a kick in the butt, whereas when you get a little older, it stops because your body becomes used to it. But when you're young, it really brings you up to that a hundred percent, and so you always get a real rush from it, and you learn a lot in the process. So, for me, it was a very quick, but rather natural transition. And also the rep that I did, to start with, were things like Cherubinos and Dorabellas and Stéphano in Romeo and Juliet. They were all roles that were not technically the prima donna roles; they were secondary. And it allowed me to do what I needed to do, continue learning my craft in a less spotlight way. And so for me, it worked out really nicely.

Marc A. Scorca: And you mentioned Matthew Epstein, just one of the legendary artist managers in the country, and his roster of artists is enormous and illustrious. How did working with Matthew help you in the early years?

Isabel Leonard: Oh, in many, many, many ways. First of all, there's my voice teacher, and she's like one leg, or two really. And then when I met Matthew, that was the beginning of the next stage, which was to do exactly what he did, which was manage a career. And it truly means what it sounds like, is you're managing different details in a singer's life, and in the repertoire that they should sing, maybe should not sing, what they should sing in five years, but not now. There are all these pieces to that part of the business that you don't learn as a singer when you're in school, because you're dealing with your technique and all the other stuff that you have to do. So, when he came along, for the first year that we worked together, he made me book all my flights. He made me book all my hotels, all my housing. He made me do all of it, so that (he said), "When you really start paying us commission, then you know why you're paying us".

Marc A. Scorca: How interesting.

Isabel Leonard: And I think he did this on purpose, knowing how type A I am. I probably never let CAMI (Columbia Artists Management Incorporated) book a flight or housing or anything until probably most recently, in the last couple years. So, I ended up doing most of it. Needless to say, I would not have had the career I've had so far without Matthew, and the rest of these wonderful people at CAMI that have been helping him now, Damon and Ricardo, who's here tonight.

Marc A. Scorca: When did Matthew first hear you?

Isabel Leonard: Matthew first heard me at Santa Barbara, Music Academy of the West, Marilyn Horne's program, which was summer of 2005 or 6 maybe. And we met that summer because I was a student out there, and I did a competition out there, which I won, which then brought me back to New York to do a recital under the auspices of the Marilyn Horne Foundation here. But I met Matthew out there, and he and Marilyn Horne are very close. And he did consultations with all of us one-on-one, and when I walked in for my consultation, they both just looked at me from across the room, and they were just like, "Come over, sit down". And I went over and I looked at them, and Marilyn Horne had this great big smile on her face. And then Matthew looked at me and he was, "Ah, I would like to manage you". And I kind of just looked at him. What did I say? I think I probably said something like, "Oh, well, that's very nice. Can I think about it?" And we kind of became really good friends from that moment on, and we talked and we shook on it first, and the contract came several months later, but that's where we first met. And he gave me a few sheets of paper with all of the repertoire that I would learn and do from that moment for like, the next 15 years. It's funny, looking at that list now, having checked off most of the Mozart and most of the Rossini.

Marc A. Scorca: I was gonna say, was the list pretty accurate?

Isabel Leonard: It's still very accurate; incredibly so. It's like looking into a crystal ball.

Marc A. Scorca: So, this artistic variety. You do concert work and recital work. You sing jazz?

Isabel Leonard: Yeah. I mean, I haven't sung jazz with a jazz band in a long time, but I would.

Marc A. Scorca: Duly noted. And your repertoire spans everything from early rep, Vivaldi and Handel, new work like Cold Mountain. Some singers really like to just bloom in a narrow range, because they know that's where they're good and that's what they want to do. Others just enjoy experimenting. Are you on the experimental side of that spectrum?

Isabel Leonard: Yeah, a lot of the rep that I did for the first six or so years, (as I say now, sometimes) "I just do what I'm told". Because in the beginning, as a young singer, unless you're particularly already advanced in your knowledge of repertoire, and what may be appropriate for you, I mean, I didn't have a clue. I had no clue. And I still have friends to this day that tease me, and they're like, "Have you seen such and such an opera?" And I was like, "I don't know". And then my friend goes, "Oh, right. Of course, there's no mezzo part in it, so why would you know it?" And I mean, call me naive, but I'm not one of those people that knows everything under the sun about the opera world, or about opera repertoire. I will learn what I have to learn. I'm passionate about what I'm doing at any given moment. Aside from having my son to raise, there are all these other things that I take care of and that I do, and that I'm interested in. So, there's a lot going on.

Marc A. Scorca: I think there must be a huge difference in the preparation of a world premiere. Very different than preparing a Rosina - do you listen to the recorded history of people singing it? Do you enjoy creating a character for the first time as you did in Cold Mountain?

Isabel Leonard: That was an exceptional experience, incredibly difficult. Jennifer Higdon's music was particularly challenging, and coming from doing Thomas Adès' The Tempest, I thought, "Well, I did that, so this is gonna be a breeze". And I was so wrong. It was very, very, very difficult. And she knows it. I've said this to her, so no secret here. But we say it to each other with a big smile on our face, you know? And I said, "You just had to write it that way, didn't you?" And she goes, "I know, sorry". Again, I like all of the music. For me, creating a new character is exciting because there's no performance practice that comes before it. You can really delve into it with the director. And doing it again in Philly was even more informative, having put it aside for a little while from Santa Fe, and then coming back to it. And even Lenny (Leonard) Foglia, the stage director for the opera, when we got together in Philly, had some new ideas about how to clarify certain things, just physically and in the staging. We changed tiny little things, but it was amazing how even some small little detail here and there affected our transition through the piece, and how it continued to evolve for us as characters. And that was really very exciting for me.

Marc A. Scorca: When you're learning a new role, let's say it's a Rossini or a Mozart role, do you start with words, start with the music, start with the notes? Do you sit at the piano yourself and play through things?

Isabel Leonard: My process is pretty much the same, no matter what I'm doing. I go through the music first. If it's an opera score, I'll highlight my part, and then I flip to the front of the book again, and I go through with - you know Nico Castel has given all of us singers a great gift, and he has translated and done the IPA for so many operas, and it really is a wonderful thing. I have done the work, so I can say I've done what he's done with a piece that we did in college. It was La Calisto, not so unknown. However, nobody had done any IPA or anything for it, but I slaved over two different dictionaries, all my IPA, all the rules of the Italian dictionary. I slaved and slaved and slaved and slaved away, and I translated, and IPA'd the entire thing myself, and this is archaic baroque Italian. And I did the whole thing, and I went through it with our Italian coach, and we corrected a few things. And so now I feel confident that when I use Nico Castel, I'm using it with all the respect in the world. And I think that's a very important thing for me, not to be disrespectful to that much work. But I go through all the work, I go through all the IPA, all the diction, and then, only then, do I really go back and start looking at the music combined with the text. And then, it just goes kind of in pieces. Sometimes if I'm practicing, I will just look at the text and I'll say the text over and over and over again, particularly in the recits and recitativo, because I like to make sure that the language is informing the lilt of the recit, rather than the other way around. And I'll go back and forth. I'll say a sentence, do the recit the way the sentence sounds, and then I'll look at the actual rhythm that Mozart wrote. And depending on who's the librettist, you take it with a grain of salt, or not - you kind of go adjusting as you look at the music.

Marc A. Scorca: Do you still have a teacher? Do you still study?

Isabel Leonard: Oh yes. Same teacher, Edith Bers. She has been my teacher since the beginning of my undergrad.

Marc A. Scorca: When someone has attained what you have, what does a teacher teach you?

Isabel Leonard: It's like having a really good car mechanic. I know nothing about cars, by the way. So if I say anything funny, chalk it up to being born and bred New Yorker. I do have a license; I am qualified behind a wheel.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, having a license and being qualified are two very different things.

Isabel Leonard: That's true too. No, I'm a decent driver. However, I know nothing about cars. Anyway, when I go into a lesson now, it still runs somewhat in a similar fashion, as it always has. We will go through warmups, and it's sort of like going home to your parents after you've done all of your schooling, and you're in your twenties, and you go home and you're 14 again. They still do your laundry. They cook for you. You're completely inept without them. And I walk into Edee's home sometimes, and I'm like, "I'm here". She's like, "So what have you been doing lately?" "I have no idea". And she's like, "What exercises?" "I really can't think right now". And there have been days where I was like, "I really, honestly have no idea. I know I warmed up before without you, many times in different countries, but right now, I have no clue". So we work together, and sometimes she has new exercises that she's been working on with students, and we try to find things out, and we work on the repertoire that I'm looking at, at any given moment. I mean, I still to this day have had a lesson on Cherubino's arias. Just a few weeks ago, we went in there and we pulled them apart again, which was painful, but...

Marc A. Scorca: Great reviews...

Isabel Leonard: ...it's amazing also because your body keeps on developing.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, I was gonna ask you that, because you're still such a young woman. But are you still discovering things vocally?

Isabel Leonard: Absolutely.

Marc A. Scorca: As your body changes, your voice changes.

Isabel Leonard: Absolutely. And also, childbirth had a huge part to play in that as well. I mean, I went from physically coming to singing as a dancer, being in a certain physical level of strength and stamina from all of that activity, learning how to sing, having to retrain myself to let go of my abdominal muscles, because I had no idea how to do that, and now, of course, I can't suck in my stomach to save my life. It's weird how your body can flip-flop, but having a baby was a big thing too, because of course, everything gets stretched out. And getting back into singing, for me felt like doing weight training with weights that were too heavy for my body, and it was trying to wield my voice, without the structure anymore. And so that was very exciting. I mean, I took a lot of time off, even after my son was born. I did a concert when he was about two months old, but I didn't really go back to work until he was five months old, which is kind of a long time. Lots of singers go back earlier. I mean, everybody's different; everybody's bodies are different. And I think it also depends on what you're used to; what kind of strength you're used to having physically. But for me, a lot of it had to do with the core and redeveloping, then retraining. But I also took it as an opportunity to not develop my core as I had had it before, but to develop it as a singer. So, the breathing became really paramount. It's hard to explain exactly the differences, but I thought if anyone were given a second chance to learn how to breathe, this is it, right? You're never gonna get a second chance, and that was the second chance.

Marc A. Scorca: How wonderfully described. When I look at your repertoire list, coming up there are some new roles. I look at Adalgisa in Norma, which will be a first, and a Charlotte in Werther, both of which are different vocally than the work you've been doing so far. Do you work with your voice teacher on those? Do you have to discover some new vocal technique or quality to do something like Charlotte in Werther?

Isabel Leonard: Well, the truth, I haven't started learning them yet, so I can't tell you specifically, but I can tell you through learning other pieces, what tends to happen, particularly pieces like Jennifer Higdon's Cold Mountain, Thomas Adès' The Tempest and Blanche in Dialogues of the Carmelites, and I mention those three because they're probably the highest.

Marc A. Scorca: Because Ada (Cold Mountain) is high; it's very high.

Isabel Leonard: Right. So, they're probably in the highest tessitura of all the rep that I've done so far, and so in learning that repertoire you have to learn how to sing it. You don't just open a score and beauty comes out. A lot of times, it takes several steps. And I do remember very, very specifically feeling after I had done Thomas Adès' The Tempest, I remember looking at Edee going, "Well, this piece taught me how to sing A's; this one, this piece, not any other piece, this one. Because there were A's on every page, if not B's, but there were A's for sure, on every single page and all different approaches: starting on an A, going up to an A. It was everything. And it was kind of entertaining, because after a while, you got this real sense of confidence about it. And so the next time I saw an A on the page (I'm very visual), it didn't look as high as it has looked in the last 10 years of my life. Anybody who sings understands exactly what that means. You see a note and you go, "Oh my God", but it just didn't look like that anymore. And now, after doing Ada in Jennifer Higdon's piece, B's still look high, but they don't look nearly as high. Now they just look like some, "Okay, all right. I know what we're doing here". It may not always come out great, but that's life.

Marc A. Scorca: You've talked about balance, and you've talked about balance in terms of programming; balance between new works and familiar works; balance that allows you to spend time with your son, and pay attention to him and his needs. How do you, as an artist, who is in great demand around the world, catch your breath? How do you protect yourself and rest the way you need to?

Isabel Leonard: Ah, it's a good question; it sort of depends on what's going on. On a very simple level, I'm very happy after my son is in bed to zone out with some nonsense TV. That's not a very philosophical or probably exciting answer, but it's what I do. And then there are other things - actually Matthew used to say to me, "There are like three types of singers: when they're stressed, the ones that go and shop, the ones that go to spas, and the ones that eat". Something like that. I was like, "What about those of us who do all of the above?" And that's sort of, when I say coping mechanism, I don't mean it as a negative thing. The lifestyle also is so different. You're constantly traveling, and on one level you're always with people, and then on another level, you're always alone. It's a very strange mix of feelings, because on one hand, you become a very social person, and then when you leave rehearsal, you're by yourself, probably. That's like a whole other subject. But I would say for me, it's about shutting the noise off. Actually, in my junior year of college, I moved back home, because my dad was sick, so I went back home, and then I stayed there until I really started working, and I wasn't around any longer. But I would come home and my mother would have WQXR blasting on the radio, and I would just "Please turn that off. Please, please, please turn it off. Just turn the noise off. I just need quiet". I've had people singing in my face all day, or I've been listening to music all day. You know, the oral input is just constant, you know? And so, for me, quiet. And again, I know if I watch TV and everything, that's not quiet, but it's a different type of drone. I don't know what that is; somebody who knows more about the brain can tell me. But it is about sort of shutting off that other part of our brains that are constantly on. And it's hard to acquire the awareness, first of all, that that's what you're doing. There are some artists, and you meet them, they're on all the time.

Marc A. Scorca: I don't know how they do it, how they just don't wear out.

Isabel Leonard: I honestly don't know how they do it, and it's complicated.

Marc A. Scorca: But what you said is so true. The dichotomy between being in a highly populated, active, noisy environment, and then when it's all over, even if you go out to dinner with your colleagues in the cast, you go home to a hotel, it's not home. You go back to a hotel. It's very difficult, the two moods of loneliness or aloneness, and being with people all the time.

Isabel Leonard: Right. It's an interesting lifestyle.

Marc A. Scorca: What advice do you have for young singers? You, yourself are still a young singer, and I feel almost silly asking you that question, but people, of course, are gonna look up to you and ask you for advice. What do you tell them about studying, or a career in opera? What advice do you have?

Isabel Leonard: Well, you learn so much as you go along. On a singing level, getting your technique sorted out is always of utmost importance. It won't be sorted out in your 20's, necessarily. It may, I mean there's some very gifted young, young, young singers. But again, I think to understand and to accept that it will constantly change, particularly in the beginning, because every role that you do affects you differently, not just mentally, but vocally. Every time you get sick, it affects you in the brain. Learning how to cope with the things that make you uncomfortable about it all. I remember, particularly in college and in my masters, because your body is still developing so much and your technique is developing at a much different rate than when you leave school, when hopefully your technique is at least mostly in place. Because it's developing so much and you're trying new things every week and every other day, sometimes it's working really well, and sometimes it just doesn't work at all, and you feel like your life is over. And to know that that's completely normal and supposed to happen is important, and just to accept it. Just to say, "Okay, this is where I am right now; just deal". Allow it to be what it is right now. And it's still hard. I mean, to this day, I go to a lesson and Edee will say to me, "Look, just be okay with it right now. You know it's gonna be fine. If you were to go on stage and sing the way you're singing right now, it's gonna be fine. You and I know that it can be that much more, and you'll be happier if we get to that 'more', because it's your own sense of who you are and your technique, and the way it feels when you sing, and you want it to feel wonderful". She's like, "But at this moment, if this is what happens, it's still really good". And that's really important to know, because then you're not beating yourself up every single moment of the day thinking you have to be this image of perfection all the time. And that's just not possible. It's completely impossible. Change is the name of the game.

Marc A. Scorca: I think that is great advice. We like to take questions from members of the audience...question.

Audience Member #1: My name's Kristen, and we saw you in Barber of Seville this year, which was my first time at the opera, and it really made me wanna see the whole version in Italian, so I'm curious about your feelings of singing that opera in Italian versus the English version.

Isabel Leonard: Well, it's always funny to hear a translation to something that you first learned in a foreign language that you already have your own translation. And then somebody else is imposing a translation that you may or may not agree with, or that, for poetic license, or the purpose of transmitting a story, it works better the way they have written it out, even though your brain thinks of it in different ways. So, in some ways, you're now working with three separate translations in your mind. So, when I did the English for the first time, it was very confusing. We were all very, very confused, not solely because of the cuts, but every time when you took a breath, every muscle in your body, first of all, wanted to sing in Italian, and so that was very entertaining. And then, all the other muscles were going, "Well, but I translate it this way", or "The word that I'm singing right now, for the last however many years of my life, has meant 'love' for this melisma. And now I have to sing something else because whoever's written the libretto wants it to be something else, so that it makes more sense, perhaps, to the audience". So, there are lots of things to reconcile when you're doing it. And eventually, like anything else, it becomes second nature, hopefully.

Marc A. Scorca: Is there a language that feels most natural to you?

Isabel Leonard: Between English, French, Spanish, and Italian, I'll do any of those without any issues. English has obviously, being my first language, has its comfort. It's not the easiest language to sing in. I think mainly because of the way we speak it. Even now, (dark, low-pitched tone) I am speaking very in the back of my throat, because (high, bright tone) I don't like singing and speaking like an opera singer, because I find it obnoxious, so I don't do it. However, I'm sure my teacher would think, "Isabel, please speak a little higher in your speaking voice. It's much nicer for you". And I agree, and I end up sounding like that after concerts, or recitals. And everybody goes, "Oh, you've been singing, haven't you?" I was like, "Why? How can you tell?" To answer your question, eventually, it'll sort of becomes second nature. Whether I have a preference? I mean, the Italian is, it's just like going back to the roots. So, the actual act of singing feels better in that language; that's what it was meant for. But I do think it's an interesting challenge to translate, particularly something that you have to sing. There's so much more involved, than just the poetry. It's the vowels and where they are in the register, in the voice. I would say the majority of singers are not super-thrilled if you put an 'oo' vowel at a very high place in their register; it's uncomfortable. And when we first did The Barber of Seville, there were a couple of moments, where there were a few words that were in that sort of range with this sort of "oo" vowel, and we all said, "Can we please change the word? It is so uncomfortable". And I think that should be an art, in and of itself, is translating a piece so that not only does the audience enjoy it in their native language, but that the singers are really put in a position of being super-comfortable in their own language as well. And I think that's really a tricky thing to do.

Marc A. Scorca: In the good old days of American regional opera, when a lot more opera companies performed in English, one of the challenges was that there were so many different translations of operas. And casts would come together and everyone knowing a different translation of it, or someone would get sick and you'd bring someone else in, but it's a totally different translation. Very difficult. You could write a whole essay about English translation of the operas.

Isabel Leonard: Oh sure. I mean, even the second time around when I did The Barber of Seville, again in English just now, when I had done it for the first time a few years ago, if you had said "Sing it in English, from what you remembered two years ago", there would've been a few things that I would remember; most of it I couldn't recall, because I had done the Italian in the interim. However, when we started going through it again, I'd hit these walls. So, I would start singing with the music in front of me, everything was fine, everything was fine, the muscle memory, everything was sort of kicking in. And all of a sudden it would just go like that (slams hands together). And I was stuck. Finally, I said to somebody, "Are we missing something here? Is it changed? Something is off and I don't know what it is". And they had to go back to the other version and say, "Oh, you're remembering X, Y, and Z". I couldn't remember what it was, but I knew that there was something...so muscle memory is really interesting and fascinating.

Marc A. Scorca: (another question?)

Audience Member #2: Alissa Grimaldi, I'm a voice teacher/singer. But I wanted to say that you are so refreshing, 'cause I get a lot of students that beat up on themselves a lot. And it's wonderful to see how unscathed you are, and all your training. Commend your teacher very much, because you're very unpretentious about everything and take it one day at a time. And I admire that so much, because I get a lot of students that I really have to put back together, when they beat themselves up. And it's just wonderful to hear this. So, I wanted to come see this so much.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, thank you, and you're unscathed.

Isabel Leonard: So, I'm glad I look unscathed. I mean, I think nobody's unscathed. I mean, we all have our pasts, our demons, our troubles, and whether you carry them with you every day is your choice, and how you deal with them too. And every day is a different day. I mean, I completely fell apart the other day. I was flying back from Chicago and I had a complete panic attack; it's something that happens to me. I'm fine now. I can laugh about it and recognize, "You are completely ridiculous". But at the moment it was not ridiculous. It was short of me not getting on the plane, and that's something as a singer who flies everywhere is a problem. So, we're not all unscathed. But I am blessed, and I have been blessed, particularly with my voice teacher, Edee, because every time, particularly in my undergrad and in my master's, and that's again, I feel a very volatile time. Hormonally, just your voice is constantly changing; you can't hold onto it. And I remember the feeling - once I thought, "I've grasped this concept that we're working on", and the next week, it was gone. And I thought, "Why? I just got used to it; this is so unfair". And there were days I'd walk into my lesson, and she'd look at me and she would say, "How are you?" And I would just burst into tears. (crying tone) 'I have no idea. I don't know. I don't know".

Marc A. Scorca: One lesson a week, two lessons a week, three lessons a week? Did you ever take lessons in rapid succession?

Isabel Leonard: Oh yeah. Oh God. Marathon lessons. While I was in school, it was once a week and actually quite often twice a week. Edee has always made a lot of time for her students. But definitely once a week, while in school. And then once I was outta school, it's different; you shift then. If you're around, you could do once a week, but even now, I'm around for a month and sometimes I don't see her. I sent her an email and I go, "I miss you. I haven't seen you in a long time. I'm kind of scared of seeing you, because if I open my mouth and something's wrong, I feel like I will have disappointed you". But I have done five days in a row before. It's wild.

Marc A. Scorca: That's the way some of the old greats used to take a voice lesson every day, and a trip to Italy. You make a lot of progress.

Isabel Leonard: You do. It can be taxing though; this is no small feat, the kind of singing that we do. Physically, forget even the vocal cords, it's physically exhausting, and our lessons always tend to run on for an hour and a half or two hours. So, it can be quite the marathon. I mean, sometimes I'd be away for a couple months, and then I would come home for a week, and again, not so much now, but when I was first starting to work, and I was away for a month and a half, and then I would come home and then it was like, "Oh my God, I have this next role that I'm doing", and we had to do it and we had to do every part of the role. So, we had five lessons in a row to make sure we got through it, not only once, but maybe twice. And you do learn a lot. It is a lot of hard work. I'm sweating, just thinking about it.

Audience Member #3: My name's Craig. I'm not from the opera world, but I'm certainly a fan. I actually live in Japan. Anyway, I was interested in one thing, 'cause obviously you're so famous for the trouser roles, and in Japan we have a group called Takarazuka. I dunno if you've ever heard of these people, but they're a female troupe that sing and dance and do other things. But somehow, they do the same thing of keeping something masculine, something feminine at the same time. And I wanna know what is that? When I see you, I see something very masculine in that role, and yet somehow it's still gorgeous and I dunno what that is.

Isabel Leonard: I just had this conversation with Edee the other day, but it had more to do on the singing side of things, but to address your question, the pants role for me is first and foremost about the physicality of the character. When I work on characters, or I think about characters - and I'm not somebody that sits down like, "Oh, I'm gonna do Stella Adler technique in acting". I don't stress about all of that kind of a thing. I just do my process, and the more I repeat, the more I find. In most roles, I will start from the inside out. So, if I'm starting a process of staging physically, I may not be very communicative quite yet, because I'm still working on where the character's mind is, where this is (indicates heart), and then eventually it comes out and the limbs start moving and everything else follows suit. However, I found that doing the male characters, what worked for me was doing it in the opposite way. It was starting from the outside in, particularly in the beginning when I first started doing Cherubinos, or Ruggiero in Alcina, or Sesto in Julius Caesar or Clemenza, it was who are they physically, first? And that was very helpful. Actually, both Sesto in Julius Caesar and Sesto in Clemenza are warriors, and so for me it was about the warrior physicality, but still a young man. And then I would just make my own choice. Is he a good warrior? Is he a good warrior, but a little bit afraid? Is he a warrior that has fought before, or has not fought before? Things that would have an effect on their personality and the way they stand, or the way they hold a knife. And in those two particular productions that I did, there were moments in both where I was armed, and so I would start from the outside in. How do I walk? How do I hold things? And then when I do something like Cherubino, which I've now done for a long time, I've changed him a lot. And this latest version in Richard Eyre's production, and my thanks to Richard Eyre, because he really let me put together a Cherubino that was mine. And I would do things and he would go, "Yeah, that's great; keep that", and "Oh well, do that other thing" and so he's kind of swept from side to side, but I basically played around and I did whatever came to mind. But that was after having done Cherubino for so many years, where, at least, there was some core physicality that I could start with, and then the world in which I was placed could inform the rest of it. But I've done things like where I have just sat in a chair and watched a gentleman sitting, and it's different - a girl could still sit this way, but a girl might sit like that (adjusts head angle) just a difference between two tiny little movements, or how a woman holds their hands. I have very long fingers, and so I try to make sure that I'm aware of where they're going and what they're doing at all times, even as a girl. Lots of physicality, particularly. And then the other thing that was a major, I think, part of my mindset was accepting being a boy. Because I came as a little girl, having to play a boy in The Nutcracker and thinking this was the most horrible thing you could do to a little girl. To then having to overcome the embarrassment. I mean, you'd lie to say I wasn't embarrassed doing Cherubino for the first time and having to hit on another woman. That's not who I am; it wasn't something that I was comfortable with at first. And again, accepting that, and then eventually just working through it. And now, oh my God, the chorus of The Met, they've all been hit on, short of smacking 'em all on the butt, I'm in their faces, and they all laugh, and it's very funny, and it's a beast unto itself. And I still have to do it though, every time I do a male part, even though I've done it so many times, I walk into that rehearsal room, and I have to say to myself, "Okay, you're a female. We all know this. Now you're gonna be a boy until you're done. Get over it". And that's sort of how that works.

Marc A. Scorca: We come to the end of our time today. We are so grateful for all you do on the stages around the world and for being with us tonight.