Imagista Imagista: You obviously have a remarkable, even enviable, talent as a singer and performer. At what age did you know you possessed this talent and at what age did you decided to pursue a career as an Opera singer? Isabel Leonard: Well, thank you! That’s very kind. I think I knew from a young […]

Vogue It’s a busy season for Isabel Leonard: The Grammy-winning opera singer just finished a string of five performances of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at the Metropolitan Opera; her upcoming dates with Andrea Bocelli at the Met (February 10 and 17) are already sold out; and she appears tonight on PBS (9:00 p.m. EST) singing the title role in Marnie—the Nico […]

A picture may paint a thousand words, but nothing compares to the intimacy and immediacy of a handwritten letter. Hearing the “Letter Aria” from Jules Massenet’s Werther will prove it. From an opera based on the Goethe novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, this scene finds the tortured heroine Charlotte re-reading the letters of the doomed poet. In […]

When Washington National Opera presents one of opera’s top examples of musical comedy next spring, it’s only fitting that the production will star a singer whose background sounds as ready-made for Broadway as for the opera house. Isabel Leonard, who will sing the lead role of Rosina in Gioachino Rossini’s laugh-filled romp The Barber of Seville, […]

That old guitar that you strum from time to time — did you know it has a soul? If musical instruments are said to have souls, then there is no instrument with a soul more Spanish than the guitar. And now, there is arguably no recording with a more Spanish soul than Alma Española, a new […]