Richard Leech

When American tenor Richard Leech made his Metropolitan Opera debut (as Faust in the Gounod treatment) in 1989, the event had none of the dazzling energy that accompanies a breakthrough performance by a previously-unknown but clearly top-rank virtuoso; Leech had long been known to New York audiences and critics and was by 1989 an almost 20-year veteran of the professional stage. Leech was born in Hollywood in the late 1950s. His musical training was unconventional, at least from the modern point of view (it would have, however, been considered perfectly ordinary a few centurie...