Sondra Radvanovsky is preparing to leave staged opera while she still believes her voice is at its best. The American soprano announced her decision on her return to Madrid’s Teatro Real for Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. At 57, she plans to keep singing in concerts and recitals, including concert performances of opera, but no longer wants to spend two months away from home for a staged production.
Radvanovsky says the balance has shifted. Caring for herself as a woman now matters more to her than extending her career on the theatrical circuit. In an interview with ABC, she stressed that music remains impressive: she still needs to sing and suffers when she cannot. Her Madrid appearance opens a new season and may signal the final productions for one of opera’s major dramatic voices.
Radvanovsky has also taken on a new role as an artistic adviser at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. She will teach vocal technique and work with young artists. The position lets her pass on more than three decades of stage experience without taking on the long absences productions require.
Vocal fatigue is not driving her departure. Radvanovsky says she still needs to sing and feels depressed when she cannot. Music is how she communicates emotion, and it also serves as therapy. She recalls performing Medea at the Metropolitan Opera during a divorce, after her mother’s death, when she had no home and was living from hotel to hotel. The performance let her share that emotional weight with the audience, then leave it behind on stage.
She gauges her connection with an audience by its silence, not its applause. For Radvanovsky, the decisive moment comes after the final note. The audience stays still, and she can hear people breathing before the clapping begins. Coughs suggest distraction. Silence tells her that listeners have surrendered to the music and their emotional response.
Manon Lescaut gives her a demanding character through which to explore that exchange. The young woman rejects the convent because she knows poverty has assigned her a life she does not want. Her brother and Des Grieux then shape her decisions and steer her story. Radvanovsky is drawn to Manon’s freedom and frivolity in the first act. She also rejects the weakness that keeps Manon from saying no until it is too late.
The soprano sees the character as strikingly modern. Manon’s mistakes grow out of choices made under pressure from money and men, as well as social expectations. Radvanovsky recognizes that pattern. She says she spent 25 years making a wrong decision. Manon understands the truth only before death, a point Radvanovsky considers painfully familiar to many people.
Puccini’s score keeps the story raw. Verdi’s structure divides recitative, aria and cabaletta more clearly, while Manon Lescaut unfolds without stopping. Radvanovsky considers it close to a perfect work, though she thinks some repetitions could go. Those imperfections do not diminish the achievement of a masterpiece that was only Puccini’s third opera.
Her artistic loyalties remain divided. She likens the relationship to a marriage and an affair. Verdi grounds her technique with contrasts: high and low notes, strength and softness, pianissimo and long phrases. Puccini offers something more luxurious and emotionally excessive. The Italian composers meet different needs for her, but Verdi remains her deeper commitment.
Five years after her last appearance at the Teatro Real as Tosca, Radvanovsky returns for her sixth production there, this time as Manon. Madrid has not seen the work since 1978, when it was staged at the Teatro de la Zarzuela. Its last appearance at the Teatro Real was in 1924, before the theatre closed. The Teatro Real and Ópera Köln are presenting the new co-production for 13 performances, from 23 September to 11 October 2026. Carlos Wagner directs, and Nicola Luisotti conducts. Spanish specialist publication Opera Actual has described the return as the restoration of Manon Lescaut after 102 years away from the Teatro Real stage.
The cast includes Saioa Hernández, Michael Fabiano, Lucas Meachem, Szymon Mechliński, Pietro Spagnoli, Alejandro del Cerro, Albert Casals, Javier Castañeda, Mercedes Gancedo, Mikeldi Atxalandabaso and Javier Franco. RTVE and EFE identify the production as the Teatro Real’s opening event for the 2026 to 2027 season. Radvanovsky shares the title role with Saioa Hernández, while Michael Fabiano shares Des Grieux with Jorge de León. The Teatro Real is reviving a rarely seen Puccini title, with Radvanovsky at the center of a production that may become one of her last staged appearances.
The Madrid opera season is part of a wider theatrical culture where strong performers and stage traditions remain central, as this theatre culture report shows. Radvanovsky’s case makes that culture’s personal cost unusually visible. She still wants the music, but no longer accepts every condition attached to performing it.
Radvanovsky is leaving with the instrument that made her famous still intact. She has decided that artistic authority also means choosing when to stop. Manon Lescaut arrives at the Teatro Real as a major Puccini revival and a rare chance to hear a soprano who plans to leave the stage before the audience remembers only what she once was.
