The Sunday Times: 'Opera houses are asking me what I'd like to sing'

The Sunday Times: "I'm at the point where opera houses are asking me what I'd like to sing"

Ahead of her new I Puritani at the Royal Opera House, Lisette sat down with Neil Fisher of The Sunday Times for a wide-ranging conversation about bel canto, the discipline behind the voice, and what it means to reach the peak of a career.

Her dream role this season is Elvira in Bellini's I Puritani, one of the most punishing assignments in the bel canto repertoire. Lisette didn't downplay the climb:

"If it's not the Everest, it's Everest adjacent."

After more than twenty years on stage, she also described a turning point in how repertoire now comes to her:

"Finally I'm at the point where opera houses are asking me what I'd like to sing — which more often than not does not work that way around."

She spoke too about readiness — the narrow window when a singer is "ripe, not green" for these peak-of-career roles — and about the daily discipline that sustains them, including the twelve hours of silence she keeps when singing in full voice. On the art form's future she was characteristically direct: opera, she argued, doesn't need to be dumbed down or repurposed to fit modern tastes.

The full interview is available to subscribers at The Sunday Times. I Puritani runs at the Royal Opera House, London, 30 June – 19 July 2026.