Katy Lees
Katy Lees is a soprano, storyteller and creator whose work explores voice as a place of intensity, agency and truth.
She trained and built an international career as a classical soprano, performing across the UK, Europe, the US and the Middle East in opera, oratorio and recital. Her work has included collaborations with conductors such as Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Mark Elder, Valery Gergiev, Paul McCreesh and Tadaaki Otaka, with roles including Tatyana (Eugene Onegin) and Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), and performances at venues such as the Purcell Room.
Alongside this career, Katy became a mother of three, and later received a diagnosis of terminal mesothelioma. During and after treatment, her relationship with voice changed profoundly. Singing stopped being about perfection or projection, and became a way of staying present — a means of expression, resilience and communication.
Stepping away from conventional operatic work, Katy began working with children and community groups, accompanying school performances and leading singing sessions that prioritised emotional honesty over technical polish. Through this work, and through her exploration of the Estill Vocal Model, she reconnected with the physical, instinctive pleasure of making sound.
Breathe emerged from this journey. Created in her fifties, post-cancer, the piece brings together five opera arias and spoken storytelling within a clear dramatic structure. While illness forms part of the narrative, the work is ultimately about voice — what it means to give sound to overwhelming emotion, and to claim space through singing.
Katy is passionate about reframing opera as intimate, useful and human — not as an elite art form, but as one capable of holding emotional extremes. Breathe is her Fringe debut and marks a new chapter in her work as a solo performer and creator. Her work is driven by a belief in voice as a fundamental human need — not a luxury, but a way of being present in the world.