Lea Desandre is a French-Italian mezzo-soprano. She is passionate about classical dance but, at the age of 12, her music teacher offers her to join the children’s choirs of the Paris Opera. Her first model was then Natalie Dessay of which she was a superfan Thanks to her Youth subscriptions, she can follow the shows where Natalie Dessay sings: “Thanks to my Youth subscriptions, I went to all Parisian theatres to feed on music”. She frequents the dressing rooms of operas to meet the singers who subjugate her: some adopt her and give her advice, seduced by her sincerity as a teenager She then studied at the regional conservatory of Boulogne-Billancourt in the class of Esthel Durand and in Venice with the contralto Sara Mingardo “She welcomed me to her home and told me: we will read scores, and we will end up finding who you are”.
In 2013, Lea Desandre won the 1st Young Espoir Prize at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux After joining the Atelier Lyrique de l’Opera Fuoco, she made her debut as a soloist at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 2014. Lea Desandre is noticed from the age of 20 by William Christie and joined his Jardin des Voix in 2015. She perfected her talent with Sara Mingardo, Valérie Guillorit and Véronique Gens. She then joined the ensemble Les Arts Florissants with which she performed at the Shanghai Symphony Hall on the occasion of the first Shanghai Baroque Festival.
Winner of the 7th edition of the Jardin des Voix the Académie des Arts Florissants for young singers, she trained from 2015 with William Christie and Paul Agnew in a program specialising in the Italian Baroque repertoire. She travels halfway around the world with William Christie’s team, who teaches her the long tours and the wearing of silicone protective masks to protect the vocal cords from the air conditioning of aeroplanes. In 2016, Lea Desandre made her operatic debut in a production by Médée by Luigi Cherubini and was the winner of the 2016 HSBC Prize of the Festival international d’art lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence.
On February 1, 2017, she was crowned “Revelation Lyrical Artist” at the Victoires de la musique classique 2017. Lea Desandre then won the 2018 Prix Jeune Soliste des Médias francophones publics, a prize awarded each year by the four radio channels (France Musique, Musiq’3, ICI Musique and Espace 2) which constitute the group Musique classique des Médias francophones publics. Baroque Mezzo, she does not want to specialise in the singing of the seventeenth century: “I want to re-exandize my repertoire, and my next commitments will bite, chronologically, over the period” She is hired at the 2020 Salzburg Festival to sing Despina in Mozart’s Così fan tutte. In 2021, Lea Desandre sang the role of Cherubin in Mozart’s Les Noces de Figaro in a new production at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence where she made her production debut, then at the Zurich Opera, the Liceu Barcelona, the Ravenna Opera and the Paris Opera where she noticed by critics. In 2023, Lea Desandre sang the role of Cherubin in Mozart’s Les Noces de Figaro in a new production at the Salzburg Festival.
In 2024, she was expected at the Audiotrium of the House of Radio and Music to sing John Dowland and Henry Purcell with the Jupiter ensemble, under the direction of his companion, the luthist and theorbist Thomas Dunford. In April 2024, she performed the role of Médée in the opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier at the Palais Garnier in Paris. On June 6, 2024, she performed the Marseillaise during the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings.
