Isabel Leonard

There are mezzo-sopranos who ornament a production, and there are mezzo-sopranos who become its center of gravity. Isabel Leonard is the second kind. Her instrument — full, richly colored, with a still-youthful clarity that has only deepened with the repertoire — is deployed entirely in service of character: a Carmen who holds the Met stage through sheer theatrical weight; an Angelina in La Cenerentola whose coloratura is never merely decorative; a Blanche de la Force whose Act IV stillness stops a room. The voice is made for the long phrase and the precise dramatic moment in equal measure.

She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2007 and has remained one of its most arresting presences since. Her recording career carries three Grammy Awards: for Thomas Adès's The Tempest with the Met Orchestra, Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges with Seiji Ozawa and the Saito Kinen Orchestra, and a compendium of Anne Frank and Rilke settings with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. The Richard Tucker Award in 2013 recognized what audiences at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Houston Grand Opera, Carnegie Hall, and Santa Fe Opera had been hearing for years. The current season brings her most demanding project yet: the title role of Gabriela Lena Frank's El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego at the Met.

She was formed in New York — at the Cathedral School of St. John the Divine, then LaGuardia High School, then Juilliard under Edith Bers — and the city's double inheritance runs through everything she does: the operatic institutions on one side, and on the other an Argentine maternal heritage that has quietly shaped her most distinctive work. The recital disc Alma Española, made with guitarist Sharon Isbin, and a late-season Carnegie program of Spanish song and dance with flamenco artists Sonia Olla and Ismael Fernández speak to the same thread. The seasons ahead continue it: Ravel's Shéhérazade with the San Francisco Symphony, L'enfant et les sortilèges in St. Louis, and Show Boat at Houston Grand Opera.