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Despite all the intensive training, Mitchell still felt unready when she was asked in 1975 to make her Met debut as Micaela, this time opposite Placido Domingo's Don Jose. "I had never sung with Domingo," she says, "and I had never seen the sets until I went onstage. God must have smiled on me." So did the audience. Mitchell was warmly received, praised for her bright, fresh voice and winning demeanor. She was invited back to sing Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute, the new Prioress in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites and Musetta in Puccini's La Boheme, all essentially lyric parts that require grace and agility but not the sheer vocal power demanded by spin to roles like Leonora. When Met Music Director James Levine asked her in 1979 if she thought she could tackle Forza, she was apprehensive. Except for Butterfly, the role is bigger than any she had ever sung. Leona agonized over her decision. Her husband Elmer Bush, a Los Angeles schoolteacher, remembers a night in London last year when Mitchell sat bolt upright in bed and moaned, "I must be crazy to do this."
Others, however, had no doubts about her ultimate success. Terry McEwen, former president of London Records for whom Mitchell recorded Gershwin's Porgy and Bess in 1975, recalled, "Ever since I first heard her when she auditioned for our recording, I knew she was going to be a star." Adler, a veteran of opera for more than half a century, found Mitchell's voice "beautiful, of a first-rate quality with an excellent high register, which is important for appealing to the public." Metz, her coach, has described Mitchell's voice as a combination of Price and Italian Soprano Mirella Freni. "It's basically lyrical," he says, "but with thrust. She has that extra little kick, the power to go boom when the time comes."
In the Met's Forza, Mitchell's voice goes boom when it has to, as in the climax of Leonora's last-act aria Pace, pace, mio Dio. She is also especially persuasive in her scenes with the monks of the monastery, investing her work with searing fervor. "Religious singing is so involved with with love, and I try try to keep that in my singing," explains the minister's daughter. "It sounds corny, I know, but I brought it from my childhood."
Mitchell's success will not send her rushing in search of even more demanding roles. "I'm not about to go on a rampage and sing 500 million Leonoras next year," she says. While there is a Desdemona in Verdi's Otello later this season as well as an Aida scheduled for 1984, both in Sydney, Australia, the robust, attractive soprano will not abandon her Mozartian characters or strictly lyrical parts like Liu in Puccini's Turandot. "You have to give the voice a chance to relax," she says. "I want to last, not just make a splash." Leona Mitchell has already made her splash; one suspects that it will be a long time before anyone has heard the last of her.
— By Michael Walsh