Battle, Kathleen

in full Kathleen Deanne Battle

(born Aug. 13, 1948, Portsmouth, Ohio, U.S.) American opera singer, among the finest coloratura sopranos of her time.

As a child and young adult Battle was both a good student and a good singer, but her ambitions were not grand. She was awarded a scholarship to the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in Ohio, but she chose to major in music education rather than risk a performance career. In 1971, with both bachelor's and master's degrees, Battle set out to teach music to Cincinnati's inner-city youth. While teaching, she continued to study voice privately, which resulted in an audition with Thomas Schippers (then conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra). He was so moved by Battle's remarkable voice that he hired the almost totally inexperienced singer to perform at the 1972 Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy.

Battle's debut at the festival in Johannes Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem was very well received. Not long after, Schippers introduced Battle to the conductor James Levine, who was to become influential in her performing career, and by 1978 she was singing supporting roles in major U.S. opera houses. That same year she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City as the Shepherd in Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser. Critics immediately recognized that Battle's lyric soprano was exceptionally pure and that it retained its perfection at both ends of her two and one-half octave range, from low A to high E. She dispatched the virtuosic coloratura of George Frideric Handel and Henry Purcell, excelled in such W.A. Mozart roles as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, and Despina in Così fan tutte, and was celebrated for her interpretation of African American spirituals. Her extensive discography also included the music of Gaetano Donizetti, Richard Strauss, George Gershwin, and others.

In February 1994 the Metropolitan Opera dismissed Battle for what it termed “unprofessional actions.” After a media frenzy, however, Battle emerged undamaged, and both her concerts and her recordings remained popular.