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Interview: American mezzo Isabel Leonard demonstrates art of shaping a character in début as Canadian Opera Company's Sesto

By John Terauds on February 2, 2013

(Dario Acosta photo for Opera News)
(Dario Acosta photo for Opera News)

Mezzo Isabel Leonard, one of the bright young stars of the North American opera world, makes her Canadian Opera Company début on Sunday afternoon as Sesto in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito. She is beautiful and her voice is superb. But another reason she is so hot is less obvious: She is a great actor.

During a recent post-rehearsal breather, Leonard and I talked about how mezzos frequently find themselves singing male charactetrs — known as trouser roles. These roles cover the full gamut of types, and that’s before each director put their own spin on the situation and its characters.

“The story is different from any I’ve done so far,” says Leonard of preparing her début as Sesto, who is caught in the middle of a conflict regarding his feelings for Vitellia and her wish to see Roman emperor Tito dead (because it looks like he isn’t going to marry her).

Sesto thinks he has killed Tito, but later discovers he hasn’t. His conscience forces him to confess — an act of contrition that eventually earns Tito’s forgiveness.

“This whole idea of betrayal is a very modern concept, and I think we all experience it on some level – whether we are the one who is betraying or who is betrayed,” says Leonard. “The level of this betrayal is, I think, more than most of us can comprehend, and that’s where the challenge lies in the acting part of it – the becoming of Sesto himself and who he is, what makes him tick and why does he listen to Vitellia as much as he does.”

“It’s been a very interesting process,” the singer concludes.

It’s one that many opera audiences take for granted, because there is already so much going on with a full orchestra and singing.

In the case of master composers, like Mozart, the music contains all the emotional cues a listener needs.

“If you know the text very well, or if when you go to the opera you understand the language when it’s coming out of the singer’s mouth, I think [the music] could be enough, because you’re listening to beautiful music and you can respond to it immediately. That would be a very enjoyable experience,” Leonard responds. “But from one animal to the next, we need that physical component. We read so much on body language.”

The mezzo says that behavioural science is teaching us more and more every day about body language, “but we pick up on these things instinctually. One of our jobs as an actor is to recreate or create them onstage so that it’s a full character, where the body is part of it. Maybe what he’s saying is one thing, but his body is saying something else – and that’s a conscious choice, because we do that in real life as well.”

There is a wide range of ways in which opera directors address the physical side of acting.

Opera Atelier’s Marshall Pynkosky, for example, favours the broad, unambigious gesture. Others, like La clemenza di Tito director Christopher Alden, provides a broad view for each scene, leaving the detail work up to each singer.

“He’s not telling us who we are and what we’re playing, but he is guiding us very narrowly in what he’s looking for,” Leonard explains.

The period in which an opera is set has a big role to play, as well. One of Leonard’s most requested roles is as the male servant Cherubino in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.

As a servant, an 18th century Cherubino needs to be mindful of his low rank on the social ladder. “The relationship with Susanna needs to be close, but within the constraints of that time period. In a modern production, it can be much more close physically,” says the singer.

“I do think I try to inform the character’s way of handling a situation and his or her decisionmaking process, their relationship to their world and to the other characters on stage appropriately, according to whatever sense of the period that I get that is the strongest,” Leonard explains.

It is one way of explaining why some operatic updates sit more comfortably in their new surroundings than others.

Leonard was lucky enough to grow up in New York City, the daughter of an American father trained as a visual artist and a physicist mother from Argentina with a great passion for opera.

When she was little, the future Juilliard graduate’s parents dragged her to museums, the Met, put her in ballet lessons at age 5 and sent her to a performing arts high school.

Interestingly, Leonard thinks the dance lessons may have been the most helpful. Dance helped her develop knowledge of her body and how to move it. “It also helped provide an extra technique for creating characters with your body and to know what that means,” says the mezzo.

Her later studies included tap, jazz and Flamenco, all of which she wishes she still had time to practise. “I got through my undergrad at Juilliard dancing, even though I was in the vocal arts department,” she smiles.

In fact, dance even introduced her to her first trouser role.

Leonard spent two Christmases dancing in the Joffrey Ballet’s Nutcracker. The first year, when she was 9, it was as a doll. The following December, she was cast as a boy in a party scene. “At that time it was, okay, are you tall? You’re a boy,” she recalls.

“My line now is that someone should have told me at 10 that I would be playing boys later on,” Leonard laughs. “I was devastated as a 10 year-old; I wanted to be a girl in the party scene, with frilly dresses and curls – any girl would have wanted to wear those dresses, and I was horrified.”

“I was already being typecast,” she smiles.

Because of the care Leonard takes in preparing a role — and because it can just as easily be a male character as a female one — she wishes the opera world could make more progress in eliminating labels.

“Down with the labels! Down with the labels!’” she laughs.

“In theatre, you don’t say she’s a female actor. She’s just an actor. I’d like to call my self Isabel, singing actor,” Leonard insists. “I would like to take all those labels down and do whatever’s appropriate – a play, musical theatre, opera, whatever I can do to the best of my abilities and with integrity on stage. I’d be okay with that.”

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Leonard joins an excellent cast in the Canadian Opera Company production, which runs until Feb. 22.

Tito is sung by tenor Michael Schade. Charismatic American Keri Alkema returns to Toronto as Vitellia, and a trio of excellent young locals fill out the remaining roles: Mireille Asselin (Servilia), Wallis Giunta (Annio) and Robert Gleadow (Publio).

You’ll find all the details, as well as a wealth of background information here.

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Here is Leonard singing “Ah guarda sorella” in a 21st century update on Mozart’s Così fan tutte from the 2009 Salzburg Festival. Her stage partner is Miah Persson:

John Terauds

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