Enjoy the 2013 Richard Tucker Award Winner, Isabel Leonard, when PBS airs the 2013 Richard Tucker Gala this January. And you may very well remember Leonard from her participation in a Met Opera video on Sesame Street.

isabel leonard richard tucker award lincoln center

Richard Tucker Award winner Isabel Leonard. Photo Credit: Jared Slater

LIVE FROM LINCOLN CENTER PRESENTS
“RICHARD TUCKER AT 100: AN OPERA CELEBRATION”
with Host Audra McDonald

Star-Studded Performances By Renée Fleming, Stephanie Blythe, Eric Owens,
Angela Meade, and 2013 Richard Tucker Award Winner Isabel Leonard

Friday, January 10, 2014 at 9:00 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Live From Lincoln Center will broadcast the Richard Tucker Music Foundation’s 2013 gala concert, one of the most highly anticipated events of the opera season, from Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. The concert event will celebrate the legendary tenor’s centenary with an illustrious all-American group of singers, and honoring this year’s Richard Tucker Award winner Isabel Leonard. The “Richard Tucker at 100: An Opera Celebration” broadcast—hosted by Audra McDonald and featuring interstitial interviews with the artists, segments from backstage, and a short documentary on Richard Tucker’s life—is taped from a concert on November 17, and will air on PBS stations on Friday, January 10, 2014 at 9:00 p.m. (ET) (check local listings).

For the past 38 years, the Richard Tucker Music Foundation’s annual gala event has presented the world’s biggest opera stars on one stage on one night. This year’s event is no exception: in a special tribute to celebrate the centenary of the late Brooklyn-born tenor’s birth, a star-studded group of American singers will take the stage for a program of favorite arias and ensembles. Performers include Stephanie Blythe, Stephen Costello, Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming, Christine Goerke, Susan Graham, Gregg Grimsley, Angela Meade, Eric Owens, Ailyn Pérez, Matthew Polenzani, and Patricia Racette, joining the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the New York Choral Society, under the baton of conductor Riccardo Frizza. Many of the singers featured on the program are past recipients of the foundation’s biggest prize, the Richard Tucker Award, which gave them recognition and much neede funds at a crucial point in their careers.

About Isabel Leonard

This year’s Richard Tucker Award recipient is the “fresh, effervescent, and lovely” (New York Times) Isabel Leonard, a native New Yorker and rising star in the United States and abroad. Besides her current run as Dorabella in the Met’s Così fan tutte under James Levine, which will be broadcast to cinemas worldwide in the spring as part of the company’s Live in HD series, the 2013-14 season sees Leonard in her highly-anticipated debuts at the San Francisco Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Dallas Opera as Rosina in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Last season also saw Leonard in an array of distinguished roles. She sang Miranda in Adès’s The Tempest, Blanche in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, and Rosina in the English version of Rossini’s Barber of Seville. She also made her debut with the Canadian Opera Company as Sesto in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito and impressed audiences in recital at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. Last year, she appeared on a segment about Lincoln Center and the Met Opera on Sesame Street.

About the Richard Tucker Music Foundation

Founded in 1975, the Richard Tucker Music Foundation is a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to perpetuating the artistic legacy of the great Brooklyn-born tenor by nurturing the careers of talented American opera singers and bringing opera into the community.

This episode is directed for television by Emmy Award winner Annette Jolles.

Interact

Join the conversation during the broadcast: #LFLC

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