‘I always dreamed of becoming an opera singer. It switched on a light in me’
Katy Lees
Katy Lees started her career on a traditional operatic career trajectory. After studying music at Cambridge University and singing at Guildhall, she went on to build an international career as a classical soprano, performing across the UK, Europe, the US and the Middle East in opera, oratorio and recital. She has worked with conductors and directors such as Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Mark Elder, Jonathan Miller, Annilese Miskimmon, Paul McCreesh and Tadaaki Otaka, with roles including Tatyana (Eugene Onegin) and Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte).
In October 2006 life came to a halt when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer — mesothelioma. Things were looking bleak. Six weeks later, her local church in Wimbledon was filled with 800 musicians, family and friends singing and playing for love of two of their own — Katy and her husband, Tom, a trombonist and also a freelance musician, and their two young children.
When the concert began, it changed everything. The performers were made up entirely of their musician friends. Despite singing in world-class choirs, until that moment, sitting in the audience, Katy had never truly understood the power of people coming together to play and sing out of love. Her fear had been replaced by hope. ‘It was like an army marching forward to defeat my enemy and take care of me.’
Inexplicably, after the concert, Katy was in less pain. Confounding all the doctors, slowly she began to heal. She even began to hope that she might sing again. From then on, she was driven by a need to communicate to people, through music and singing, what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that love — and how making music together had benefitted everyone that night of the concert. It had taught her, where there is love there is no fear. From then on, she knew she had to take the fear out of her singing.
During and after her treatment for mesothelioma, Katy’s relationship with her voice changed profoundly. Singing stopped being about chasing the elusive ‘perfect sound’ and now became about emotional authenticity.
Convinced that there was something in the healing power of people singing together, Katy began working in schools and community groups, and later set up a choir for female voices. Leaving behind preconceptions of what a beautiful voice sounds like, Katy’s goal was to encourage people to play with the raucous colours and textures of sound, as well as the ‘pretty’ ones, and find joy in discovering their own voices. ‘Singing from the heart’ became her mantra.
Exploring this idea further, Katy trained in the Estill Vocal Model, broadening her vocal palette beyond classical technique to include musical theatre, jazz and pop. Happily, the result reconnected her to opera with renewed joy. Katy is passionate about reframing opera as intimate, real and human — not as an elite art form, but as one capable of holding emotional extremes.
Breathe emerged from this journey. The show blends Katy’s personal story of survival with the five opera arias that became her lifeline. But ultimately the show is about the power of love, and the extraordinary ability human beings have for compassion.