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Kathleen Battle was born on August 13, 1948, in Portsmouth, Ohio, USA. The youngest of seven children in an African-American family with a rich tradition of singing spirituals, she graduated from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 1971. While teaching music to inner-city youth in Cincinnati, she continued her vocal studies privately. In 1972, conductor Thomas Schippers of the Cincinnati Symphony hired her to perform at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy.
Blessed with a silky, silvery lyric coloratura soprano and exceptional talent, Battle performed and recorded across various styles and genres, including classical sacred music, spirituals, and traditional jazz. She sang leading roles at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Strauss, and Gaetano Donizetti. She collaborated with conductor James Levine and jazz musicians such as Cyrus Chestnut, James Carter, Grover Washington Jr., and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Her performances alongside tenors Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and conductors Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, Georg Solti, Lorin Maazel, and Riccardo Muti have been captured in video and audio recordings.
Battle is considered a unique lyric soprano capable of bridging European bel canto opera with the African-American tradition of vocal improvisation. Her recordings of classical sacred arias by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gioachino Rossini, and Gabriel Fauré, as well as her jazz-infused renditions of spirituals, lullabies, and folksongs, showcase her cross-cultural artistry.
A five-time Grammy Award winner, Battle also received an Emmy Award in 1991. She earned the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a New Opera Production for her debut at London's Covent Garden Royal Opera House. She holds several honorary doctorates and was inducted into the NAACP Image Hall of Fame in 1999.
