The French-Italian mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre received the 2022 Opus Klassik as Female Singer of the Year and in 2024 received the Prix de la Critique as Musical Personality of the Year. She appears worldwide at leading opera houses and concert venues, among them the Paris Opéra, the Salzburg Festival, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Sydney Opera House and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
Her engagements in the 2024/25 season have included Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Mikko Franck, song recitals with Alexandre Kantorow, performances of the programme Idylle with Thomas Dunford, and tours with Ensemble Jupiter performing the programme Songs of Passion and works by Vivaldi. Prior to her return to the Salzburg Festival in the Vivaldi pasticcio Hotel Metamorphosis she made her role debuts as Sapho, Iphise and Eglé in Rameau’s Les Fêtes d’Hébé at the Opéra Comique in Paris and as Poppea in Handel’s Agrippina at the Zurich Opera House.
In the 2023/24 season she sang the title role of Charpentier’s Médée at the Paris Opéra, Idamante (Idomeneo) at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and the title role in Ariodante on a European tour. Other important roles in recent years have included Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Dido (Dido and Aeneas), Urbain (Les Huguenots), Stéphano (Roméo et Juliette) and Timna in Rameau’s Samson. Following her debut as Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro) in Aix-en-Provence she has sung this role in productions at the Paris Opéra, in Barcelona, Zurich, Lausanne, Ravenna and at the 2023 Salzburg Festival. In Salzburg, where she made her debut in 2018, she has also appeared as Despina (Così fan tutte), Amore and Valletto (L’incoronazione di Poppea) and Vénus (Orphée aux enfers), as Annio in a concert performance of La clemenza di Tito and in several concerts.
Lea Desandre has an especial love of chamber music and has presented her diverse projects on concert tours in the USA, Canada, Japan, China, South Korea and in Europe, where she has appeared at venues including London’s Wigmore Hall, the Philharmonies of Paris, Berlin and Hamburg, the Vienna Musikverein and Konzerthaus and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
Conductors with whom she has worked include Gustavo Dudamel, John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie, Myung-Whun Chung, Joana Mallwitz, Thomas Dunford, Adam Fischer, Raphaël Pichon, Carlo Rizzi, Cristian Măcelaru, Manfred Honeck, Marc Minkowski and Jordi Savall.
Lea Desandre studied with Sara Mingardo in Venice and in 2015 joined William Christie’s academy Le Jardin des Voix. In 2017 she was named Vocal Discovery of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique Classique. She has also received professional ballet training.
