Vancouver based soprano Leila Kirves is an emerging dramatic voice, making her mark as a “colorful and charismatic” (Opera Canada) performer. This past season, she made her company and role debut with Edmonton Opera for Wagner’s Die Walküre, was named a 2025 laureate of Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques, and was the 2025 Vancouver Opera Guild Career Development Grant winner. Upcoming, she takes on the titular role of Puccin’s Tosca in her debuts with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, and the Yukon Arts Centre. She also returns to Edmonton Opera as an Emerging Artist, to cover Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Siegfried.

In the summer of 2023, Leila joined the prestigious Gerdine Young Artist Program at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, where she covered the title role of Puccini’s Tosca. Leila’s additional operatic credits have included First Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Giulietta in Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Anna-Liese Franz in the Canadian premier of Mieczysław Weinberg's The Passenger, the Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, The Secretary in Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Consul, ​and the Foreign Princess in Dvořák’s Rusalka.

In 2021/2022, Leila was selected as a winner of the Canada district of the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition, and placed third in the Northwest Regionals. This year, Leila was the first recipient of the newly established Rose Ellen Nichols Award in Voice, and a finalist for Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 24/25 Ryan Opera Center. She has also been the recipient of prizes from the Vancouver Opera Guild, the Vancouver Opera Foundation Fund, and the Jacqueline Desmarais Foundation for Young Opera Singers.

Leila has since earned her masters degree in opera performance from the University of British Columbia, and a subsequent diploma in opera performance from UBC.

September 2025
Not to be altered or copied without permission.