Soprano Leah Hawkins is a graduate of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera, 2021 winner of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Women in Classical Music Career Advancement Award, and 2022 Richard Tucker Career Grant recipient. She began the 2022–23 season with her role and house debut at Pittsburgh Opera as the Foreign Princess in Dvorak’s Rusalka. Other season engagements include debuts with Santa Fe Opera and Opera Memphis as the title role in Puccini’s Tosca, Arizona Opera for the title role in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, and her return to the Metropolitan Opera as Musetta in Puccini’s La bohème. She also appears at the inaugural Sag Harbor Song Festival and presents a recital at the Kennedy Center. Future engagement include a return to the Metropolitan Opera as Louise/Betty in Anthony Davis’s X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X.
Ms. Hawkins’s past engagements include her debut at Paris Opera as Desdemona in 7 Deaths of Maria Callas; the Strawberry Woman in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at the Metropolitan Opera; her Des Moines Metro Opera debut as Serena in Porgy and Bess; the title role in Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur with Baltimore Concert Opera; and Desdemona in 7 Deaths of Maria Callas for her Bavarian State Opera debut. While in the Lindemann Program at the Metropolitan Opera, she was seen as Masha in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, the Alms Collector in Puccini’s Suor Angelica, and the High Priestess in Verdi’s Aida, among other roles. On the concert stage she has appeared with the Yale Philharmonia; the National, Colorado, New Haven, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Mid-Atlantic, and National symphonies; the Apollo Orchestra; and at the White House singing for the president of France. She made Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2017.
Ms. Hawkins is a 2018 Sullivan Foundation Award winner and the 2018 recipient of the Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshana Foundation. She received her Master of Music in Voice from Yale University and her Bachelor of Arts in Music from Morgan State University.