Performance Year: 2025
A native of Philadelphia, soprano Leah Hawkins began the 2023-24 season in Verdi’s Messa da Requiem and X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X at the Metropolitan Opera, reprised her roles in X at Seattle Opera, and debuted as Giorgetta in Il Tabarro at Dutch National Opera. She also had a series of exciting role and house debuts in the 2022-23 season, beginning the season as the Foreign Princess in Rusalka at Pittsburgh Opera, followed by the title role in Ariadne auf Naxos at Arizona Opera, Tosca at Opera Memphis and Santa Fe Opera, and Musetta in La bohème at the Metropolitan Opera. She began the 2021-22 season as Desdemona in 7 DEATHS OF MARIA CALLAS at Opéra National de Paris, returned to the Metropolitan Opera for Fire Shut Up In My Bones, Porgy and Bess, and the Summer Recital Series, and performed the title role in Adriana Lecouvreur at Des Moines Metro Opera.
The winner of the 2023 Marian Anderson Award and a 2022 Richard Tucker Career Grant, she presented a recital at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, sang Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Verdi’s Messa da Requiem with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. On the concert stage, she has also appeared with The Philadelphia Orchestra in A Space Odyssey, at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in a concert of vocal works by Beethoven, as a guest soloist with the U.S. Air Force Orchestra, Carmen in Carmen Jones with the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Black Pearl Orchestra, Mahler Symphony No. 2 with Yale Philharmonia, Beethoven Symphony No. 9, and Suor Angelica with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
