Isabel Leonard Wins Richard Tucker Award
This year’s Richard Tucker award — often called the “Heisman Trophy of opera” — goes to mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard. The 2013 prize marks the centennial of the birth of the great tenor who started his career as a cantor in Manhattan, Bronx and Brooklyn synagogues — named Ruvn Ticker. Tucker went on to build a stellar international career, as have past recipients of the award including soprano Renee Fleming, mezzo Joyce DiDonato and tenor Lawrence Brownlee. The New York native, whose mother is from Argentina, will be honored at the foundation’s annual gala concert on Nov. 17 at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Reviewing Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” at the Glyndebourne Festival in Scotland, the Financial Times praised Leonard’s signature role of Cherubino, saying the mezzo playing a young man in love became “a stage animal with charisma written all over her.”
