Julia Lezhneva

We often hear about artists who were "born to sing." Rarely, however, is this to be taken as literally as in the case of Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva. An opera career was prophesied for her precisely at the moment she first saw the light of day in December 1989 in a hospital on the Russian island of Sakhalin. "I must have screamed so suddenly right after delivery that the doctor almost dropped me and told my mother I was a born opera singer! Imagine that! Quite astonishing!" Anyone who heard Julia at the 2010 Classical Brits with Rossini's "Fra il padre" or knows her first recordings released on Naive (including an award-winning CD of Rossini arias and Vivaldi's "Ottone in Villa") will not need to be convinced of the 23-year-old artist's impressive abilities. Her Decca debut with motets by Vivaldi, Handel, Porpora, and Mozart is, by all accounts, expected to be one of the musical highlights of 2013. "I recorded this CD in Barcelona with Giovanni Antonini and Il Giardino Armonico," she recounts. "The idea for the program came from Mozart's 'Exsultate Jubilate,' which plays a special role for me because I've been singing it for many years." "At first, we thought about a purely Mozart album. But after I delved deeper into the topic of the sacred motet with Giovanni Antonini, I fell in love with the concept of presenting four great 18th-century composers, each with a motet, and showing how this genre developed – from the Baroque of Vivaldi and Handel, through Porpora's galant style, to Mozart." Although Julia Lezhneva hails from Russia, she has always felt most strongly drawn to Central European Baroque and Classical music. This, she believes, is partly due to Cecilia Bartoli's Vivaldi album, which she heard as a small child: "That impressed me tremendously, because I had never heard a coloratura voice before." At the same time, she repeatedly found that "my voice isn't really suited for Russian music, whereas I have no trouble singing Baroque repertoire." Regardless of styles and eras, she was clearly destined to sing. Her parents, Alfiya and Mikhail, were prominent geophysicists, meaning they studied the physical properties of the Earth, and would have liked to see Julia follow in their footsteps. But their daughter instinctively felt that her future lay in art and music. "Even the simplest math homework was difficult for me," she recalls. "My mother is very theoretical and had a lot of trouble teaching me what it was all about. Also, learning and concentrating were very hard for me because I couldn't sit still for a minute due to all my energy. However, writing came naturally to me, and I was interested in poetry and literature." Fortunately, her parents were also enthusiastic classical music listeners, so Julia was bombarded with it from her earliest days. "If you listen to a lot of music during pregnancy, the child listens too and becomes musical," she believes. "After I was born, my mother knew exactly what music I liked to wake up or fall asleep to. We had a lot of those old things, like big CDs that you play on those old machines." You mean LPs? From the Russian label Melodiya perhaps? "Yes! Melodiya, exactly. As a child, I listened to many of them. I was very receptive to music. One of my favorite pieces was the 'Dance of the Snowflakes' from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker." Initially, attempts were made to channel her musical talent towards the piano, but even with that, the extremely agile child had problems. "Now that I'm older, I'm a bit more relaxed," she laughs, "but as a child, I was always extraordinarily active. I was always pinching my fingers and bumping my head, and my mother realized that I wouldn't become a pianist because it would have been too exhausting for both of us. Then I discovered that I had a voice, and I realized I should do something with it." Even on the exotic and distant island of Sakhalin, which has long been a complicated bone of contention between Russia and Japan, Julia was able to get a first impression of solid Russian music education. At the age of seven, everything changed, as her family moved to Moscow, where she still lives. After Julia finished school at fourteen, she attended a technical college, where, in addition to further piano lessons, she also received her first singing lessons. With her unusually prematurely developed voice, she had already sensed an opera career at the age of eleven. She still remembers how her mother surprised her one day as she was imitating various opera singers in the bathroom: "I thought that was someone on TV! How did you do that?" One of her music teachers advised her to introduce herself to a singing professor, and Julia was immediately accepted into a full-time course, even though she had not yet reached the prescribed minimum age of fifteen. Soon she blossomed. Various musical opinion leaders took notice of her. At sixteen, she participated in the singing competition of the renowned Russian mezzo-soprano Elena Obraztsova (the judges included opera legends such as Christa Ludwig, Renata Scotto, and bass-baritone Bruno Pratico). The competition organizer said: "You have such agilità, you must sing Rossini, you are a Rossini voice." The following year she participated in the competition again, and she won. The result was an invitation to the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, Italy. Suddenly, all doors opened for her: "They offered me to sing everything, but I only accepted two things – Rossini's Stabat Mater and the opening gala with Juan Diego Florez. I remember I didn't know what I should have done! I was only eighteen and could only follow my impulses during the performance of the music. My strength wasn't even enough for a big duet from La donna del lago, although that's fantastic for my voice. But Florez was very kind and very considerate of my youth. I never felt that he put pressure on me." In 2008, Julia Lezhneva received an excellent diploma from the Academic Music College of the Moscow State Conservatory. To gain some international experience, she then attended the International Academy of Voice in Cardiff, where, thanks to the generous support of the Kempinski Foundation, she studied with the great old Welsh tenor Dennis O'Neill. "I had never lived abroad before and was very shy," she recalls. "It was quite a big step for me. But working with Dennis is one of my most beautiful experiences. He is a splendid, magnanimous, and benevolent person and a fantastic teacher who can still sing wonderfully. I am very happy that I got to know him and study with him." However, when she wanted to spend a third year in Cardiff, she was dismayed to learn that the courses had been suspended due to financial difficulties. In the meantime, however, she had met Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, whom she now asked for help. "She has a reputation for helping young talents, and I asked if she could help me find a place to study in London, at Guildhall perhaps or at the Royal College of Music? She said: 'Of course!' and called both schools. I auditioned at both and finally decided on Guildhall." It was also Dame Kiri who advised Julia to perform at the Classical Brits, which led to contact with Decca. Inevitably, various parties were interested in such a great talent, and so the young artist has already performed with some of the leading experts in classical and Baroque music. In Vivaldi's "L'Oracolo," she collaborated with Fabio Biondi's Europa Galante; with Philippe Jaroussky, she sang under Diego Fasolis accompanied by the Barochisti; she gave recitals with J. C. Spinosi and his Ensemble Matheus, guested with the Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst, and performed with the Orchestra of the Mostly Mozart Festival under Louis Langree. The tour and recording of Vivaldi's "Ottone in Villa" with Il Giardino Armonico were a great success. For 2013, concerts with René Jacobs, Sir Roger Norrington, and Giovanni Antonini are planned. In Marc Minkowski, Julia Lezhneva has found a special advocate. He brought her to the international stage and invited her to her first recordings: already at eighteen, she participated in Bach's Mass in B minor, and two years later she made her first solo album with Rossini arias. Afterwards, Minkowski invited the artist to the Salzburg Mozart Week and the Salzburg Festival. He offered her Fiordiligi in "Così fan tutte" and other leading roles, among which Urbain in Meyerbeer's "Les Huguenots," staged by Olivier Py at the Théâtre La Monnaie in Brussels, is particularly noteworthy. For this performance, Julia Lezhneva received one of the most prestigious awards in the opera scene – the Opernwelt award as "Young Singer of the Year 2011." Minkowski also secured Julia for the role of Asteria in Handel's "Tamerlano," which she performed in Salzburg in 2012 – alongside Bajazet Placido Domingo. Initially, she had feared she was not yet ready for this part, but in retrospect, she is glad to have sung it. Excellent press praised her performance in a very special way. "Placido Domingo made us all a real team. He was like a father to all of us, generous and kind to everyone – as if we were all his children or relatives. He impressed me very much, and I believe that greatly influenced my quality in this role. Sometimes I think you have to take a risk when you feel the time has come." We can certainly assume that many more risks and rewards lie ahead for her.