Four-time winner of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition (San Francisco District), soprano Ellen Leslie enjoys an international career as an opera performer, concert soloist, and recitalist.
In the 2025-26 season, Ms. Leslie toured Paris, Versailles, and Blois singing the soprano solos in the Requiems of Fauré and Saint-Saëns, including at the historic La Madeleine. She returned to Festival Napa Valley as soloist in La Dolce Vita, celebrating the music of Ennio Morricone, and appeared as part of the Royal Opera of Versailles production of La fille du régiment. Pocket Opera’s world-premiere chamber orchestration of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream featured “a particularly fine Ellen Leslie as Helena” (Civic Center). She also recorded an album of works by Byron Adams for soprano and chamber orchestra, to be released in spring 2027. Other recent engagements in San Francisco include performances of Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem and Bruckner’s Requiem, an appearance as a featured artist in the Kristin Pankonin American Art Song Award Showcase, and recitals featuring music by David Conte, Byron Adams, Eric Choate, and Ian Venables. Upcoming 2026-27 engagements include an SFCM Faculty Artist Recital featuring the music of David Conte, the soprano solo in Poulenc’s Gloria, and exciting appearances to be announced in opera and concert repertoire in the Bay Area and France.
Ms. Leslie has appeared as soloist on stages in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, France, England, Germany, and the United States. A versatile concert artist, Ms. Leslie has performed the soprano solos in the Requiems of Mozart, Fauré, Michael Haydn, Bruckner, Saint-Saëns, and Brahms; Mendelssohn’s Elijah; Bach’s St. John Passion; Mozart’s Mass in C Minor; Haydn’s Paukenmesse; Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy; and Carmina Burana. She has made multiple solo appearances with the San Francisco Symphony and was nominated for a 2024 GRAMMY Award for Best Choral Performance with a San Francisco Symphony chamber ensemble for its recording of Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna.
Bay Area opera highlights from recent seasons include Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) with the Santa Rosa Symphony; creating the role of Jane Bennet in the world premiere of Kirke Mechem’s Pride & Prejudice; Adina (L’elisir d’amore) with Pocket Opera, Festival Napa Valley (cover), and the San Francisco Opera Guild; Valencienne (The Merry Widow) with Pocket Opera; and a solo concert of opera arias with the Merced Symphony. As Ida in Opera San Jose’s Die Fledermaus, she “made the most of her brief moments as she showed off her bright, pure soprano” (Opera Today). She was “sparkling, by turns lovelorn, impish, and imperious” (Mercury News) as Josephine (HMS Pinafore) with Lamplighters Music Theatre, with which she also sang the title role in Patience.
Internationally, Ms. Leslie made her German debut as Pamina in Schloss Merode, and that same year stepped in as a critically acclaimed Rosane in Vivaldi’s La verità in cimento in Leipzig, in which she “shone from beginning to end…coloraturas and ornamentations were delivered with admirable assurance, prepared with extreme precision.” (Neue Musikzeitung, tr.) She has appeared across the U.S. in leading roles in Hansel and Gretel, The Consul, the American premiere of Rocking Horse Winner, and the world premiere of Vinkensport, or the Finch Opera. She is featured in conductor Ming Luke’s TED-Ed video The Physics of Opera Singing.
A dedicated recitalist, Ms. Leslie is particularly drawn to French, English, and German art song and frequently collaborates with composers on new works. In recent seasons, she premiered Stabat Mater by Byron Adams, written especially for her; gave a recital of English and American song in Malvern, England, with pianist Eric Choate; and premiered the high voice version of David Conte’s Three Settings of Ogden Nash. She is also an accomplished chamber musician, praised for her clarion tone and seamless straight-tone facility, and regularly performs with choral ensembles including Cappella SF and the San Francisco Symphony.
Ms. Leslie was raised aboard a 37-foot Irwin sailboat while circumnavigating the globe with her family, instilling a spirit of exploration that continues to inform her artistry. She holds dual undergraduate degrees from the University of Denver—a BM in Voice Performance and a BA in French, both summa cum laude—and a Master’s from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She completed postgraduate studies on full scholarship at the Hochschule für Musik “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig and has also studied in Strasbourg, France.
Ms. Leslie is based in San Francisco, where she lives with her husband, composer, conductor, and organist Eric Choate, and studies with Sheri Greenawald.