Leah Partridge
SOPRANO
Celebrated for her “full, rich voice, captivating in its beauty and grace” (Opera Now) and her “clear, agile soprano” (Chicago Sun Times), Leah Partridge has garnered worldwide critical acclaim for her compelling interpretations of over forty of opera’s leading ladies. After her recent performances of Diana in Vicente Martin y Soler’s Mozart-like comedy L’Arbore di Diana in 2017, Twin Cities Arts said, “The unquestionable high point of the evening had to be Partridge’s first act aria,” and the Minneapolis Star Tribune declared, “Leah Partridge actually stopped the show.”
Ms. Partridge’s upcoming 2022 performances include Micaëla in Bizet’s Carmen with the Helena Symphony. In 2021, she performed Violetta in La Traviata in an outdoor, socially distanced production with Opera Naples. During the pause of 2020, Ms. Partridge continued teaching music and developed a young girls’ online singing group while also becoming a part-time flower farmer.
In 2019 Ms. Partridge sang Beethoven Symphony No. 9 with the Fondazione Arturo Toscanini in Parma, Italy and in recitals with collaborative pianist Carol Goff at Mercer University and at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.
Partridge has performed Helena in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Italy; Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, Spain; and Musetta in La Bohème with Washington National Opera and Atlanta Opera, about which the Atlanta Journal Constitution raved, “Leah Partridge gives us a Musetta that’s proud and brazen, but also intuitive and sympathetic, a blend of trash and class, a flash of color and self-determination in an otherwise dingy city.”
Partridge performed Mimì in La Bohème and Nedda in Pagliacci with Opera Omaha, and the four heroines in Les Contes d’Hoffmann with Seattle Opera. Of her performance as Marie in La Fille du Régiment with Mill City Summer Opera, the Minneapolis Star Tribune stated, “this opera is all about Marie, and Mill City smartly cast the young and attractive Leah Partridge, whose silvery, elegantly supple voice — a lyric coloratura with an especially agile top register — is perfect for the role. Beverly Sills described Marie as ‘Lucille Ball with high notes,’ and Partridge’s Marie caught that zany spirit.”
Other highlights of Partridge’s career include performances of Violetta in La Traviata with Semper Oper Dresden, the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor with Teatro Colòn in Buenos Aires, and her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2008 followed by several return engagements and live in HD broadcasts, including Peter Grimes (First Niece) and Thaïs (La Charmeuse). She has performed in concert with the Orchestras of Atlanta, Boston Baroque, Cleveland, and San Diego Symphony and can be heard on the 2011 art song recording Finding Home with Jake Heggie and Ricky Ian Gordon.
A native of Georgia, Ms. Partridge earned her Bachelor of Music degree from Mercer University and her Master of Music degree from Indiana University, where she was endowed the Wilfred C. Bain opera fellowship. She was a 2004 National Semi-Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition and took first prize in the Opera Birmingham and Palm Beach International Voice Competitions. She is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the SpeakEasy Cooperative, and teaches voice online and at her studio in mid-town Atlanta.