Sondra Radvanovsky

Sondra Dee Radvanovsky (born 11 April 1969) is an American and Canadian soprano. Specializing in 19th-century Italian opera, Radvanovsky is widely regarded as a leading interpreter of bel canto, verismo, and works by Giuseppe Verdi. Her repertoire includes the title roles in Médée, Norma, Tosca, and Rusalka, Leonora in Il trovatore, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, and Donizetti's "Tudor Queens": the title roles in Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Elizabeth I in Roberto Devereux.

Early life and studies
Radvanovsky was born in Berwyn, Illinois, to a Czech father and Danish mother. At age 11, she moved to Richmond, Indiana. She studied at Pleasant View School and Richmond High School and then Mission Viejo High School. She sang her first full-length opera, Mimi in Puccini's La bohème, in Richmond at age 21. She studied voice at the University of Southern California for two years and drama at the University of California, Los Angeles for two years, after which she studied privately. She also received training at the Tanglewood Music Center and the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music.

In 1995 Radvanovsky won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and first prize in the Loren L. Zachary Society Competition. In 1997 she won the George London Foundation Competition. Her teachers have included Martial Singher, Ruth Falcon, and Anthony Manoli, who is also her accompanist.

Career
After the National Council Auditions, Radvanovsky enrolled in the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. In 1996, she appeared in Rigoletto as Countess Ceprano. After performances in smaller roles there, she came to attention as Antonia in Les contes d'Hoffmann.

She became a regular soloist at the Met, performing in Verdi's Stiffelio, Bizet's Carmen, Verdi's Il trovatore, La bohème, and Verdi's La traviata. In May 1999, she appeared at Houston Grand Opera as Elena in Boito's Mefistofele. In 2000, she performed in Verdi's Luisa Miller at the Spoleto Festival USA. In October 2002, she appeared at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the title role of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah.

In 2006, she made her debut at the Royal Opera House in London in Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac, opposite Plácido Domingo in the title role.

In 2010, she opened the Canadian Opera Company's season in the title role of Verdi's Aida. She was successful as Leonora, notably in David McVicar's production of Il trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera. In 2011, she hosted the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, which was broadcast in film theaters around the world. In addition to her specialty in Verdi heroines, she has also sung the title roles of Puccini's Suor Angelica, Puccini's Tosca, and Dvorak's Rusalka, among others.

During the 2014/15 season, Radvanovsky sang the title role in Bellini's Norma, which she called a "perfect role vocally and temperamentally" in an interview with The New York Times, at the San Francisco Opera. She made her Norma debut at the Teatro Campoamor with Ópera de Oviedo in the 2011/12 season and received critical and popular acclaim in the role during the 2013/14 season at the Metropolitan Opera. In the Metropolitan Opera's 2015/16 season, Radvanovsky performed all three queens in Donizetti's "Tudor" operas, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Queen Elizabeth I in Roberto Devereux.

At the Paris Opera, Radvanovsky appeared in the title role of Aida in 2016. Other roles there included Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, Hélène in Verdi's Les vêpres siciliennes and Élisabeth in Verdi's Don Carlos.

At the Liceu Opera, Barcelona, she appeared in the opera Andrea Chénier on 24 March 2018; after a prolonged ovation for her aria La mamma morta, the conductor granted her an encore, a practice which is now rare. On 4 July 2018, she repeated the aria D'amor sull'ali rosee during a performance of Il trovatore at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, the first woman - and only the third singer - to sing an encore since the house's opening in 1989. For the 2022-2023 season at the Metropolitan Opera, Radvanovsky sang the title role in the company's first-ever new production of Cherubini's Médée.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Radvanovsky and fellow soprano Keri Alkema launched a podcast series entitled Screaming Divas with the first episode aired on 24 April 2020.

Personal life
Radvanovsky was introduced to Duncan Lear by tenor Michael Schade. They married in December 2001 and Lear assumed the role as her business manager. She lived in New York while her husband was in Toronto during the first year of marriage, after which they lived together in the suburbs of Greater Toronto, first in Oakville, and then in Caledon, Ontario. She acquired Canadian citizenship in February 2016. In 2022, Radvanovsky and Lear divorced.

Awards and recognition
Radvanovsky won Outstanding Female Performances in Roberto Devereux with the Canadian Opera Company in 2014 Dora Award, while the production itself was awarded the best production. She also won the Female Singer category in the 2nd Annual Excellence in Opera Awards for the same production. She was a recipient of 2015 Opera News Award. On 12 October 2016 she was honored in the annual Opera Canada Awards. She won "Sustained Excellence in Performance" in the 4th Annual Excellence in Opera Awards for the Tudor trilogy at the Met. She won "Outstanding Female Performance" in the 2017 Dora Award for Norma with Canadian Opera Company. She was named the 2018 Vocalist of the Year by magazine Musical America. In June 2018 she was named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Conservatory of Music.

CD

 * Verdi Arias; Constantine Orbelian conducting Russian Philharmonic Orchestra (Delos, 2010)
 * Verdi Opera Scenes with Dmitri Hvorostovsky; Constantine Orbelian conducting Russian Philharmonic Orchestra (Delos, 2011)
 * Donizetti The Three Queens - Lyric Opera of Chicago, Riccardo Frizza (conductor) (Pentatone, 2022)
 * Turandot with Jonas Kaufmann, Ermonela Jaho; Antonio Pappano conducting Orchestra dell' Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Warner Classics, 2023)

DVD

 * Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac with Plácido Domingo, Naxos 2009
 * Leonora in Il trovatore, The Metropolitan Opera, 2011
 * Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, The Metropolitan Opera, 2013
 * Norma in Norma, The Gran Teatre del Liceu, 2015
 * Norma in Norma, The Metropolitan Opera, 2018