Biography

Leila Schütz began her musical education with the violin, which she studied in Paris with professor Florin Szigeti. She started singing at the age of 12, then trained at the Nadia and Lili Boulanger Conservatory (Paris) with Elsa Maurus and Doris Lamprecht. Alongside her musical studies, Leila earned a Master’s degree in Theater Studies from Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle University, dedicating her thesis to Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges. Her vocal training then took her to the Hochschule für Musik in Dresden, where she completed her Bachelor's degree in Yamina Maamar's class before joining the opera studio at the Rostock Theatre where she also earned her Master's degree in Martina Rüping's class. She also studied German Lieder in Masterclasses with Olaf Bär and Bo Skovhus.  In early music academies, she received advice from musicians and singers such as  Stéphane Fuget, Emmanuelle de Negri and Claire Lefilliâtre, with whom she perfected her mastery of the style. 

Her participation in William Christie's production of Dido and Aeneas, directed by Deborah Warner at the Opéra Comique when she was only 12 years old left a deep mark on her and strengthened her enthusiasm for baroque music. In November 2023, she was awarded three prizes at the Cavalli Monteverdi competition in Cremona, where the jury, chaired by Laurent Brunner, brought together prominent musicians such as Michael Chance, Francesco Corti, and Antonio Greco. As a result, she was invited to perform at the Orfeo Week 2024 Festival directed by Raffaele Pe. Additionally, she trained in baroque dance with Margit Legler. 

Winner of three awards at the Cavalli Monteverdi competition in Cremona 2023, French soprano Leila Schütz was a member of the  Opera Studio at the Rostock Theatre (Germany) from 2023 to 2025.
Leila Schütz was a scholarship holder of the Ad Infinitum foundation and is also a laureate of the Lion's Club prize from the International Academy of Singing in Saxony.

As a member of the Rostock Theater troupe (2023-2025), Leila Schütz performed the parts of Frasquita (Carmen, Bizet), the Sandman and Dew Fairy in Hänsel and Gretel (Humperdinck), Amore in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Caterina Cavalieri in Amadeus (Peter Schaffer), and the four female roles in The Wizard of Oz (Lucy Landymore). She played Zerbinetta in the hybrid opera Dafne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss and Heinrich Schütz, with the Serkowitzer Volksoper, blending opera, operetta, and baroque music. She debuted at the Semperoper in Dresden in the role of a eunuch in The Nose by Shostakovich directed by Peter Konwitschny.  In Germany, she also sang the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Magic Flute, as well as her lesser-known counterpart, Hersilia, in a production of Orpheus und Euridike by J. G. Naumann, with the Elblandphilharmonie in Dresden.  She also sang the part of Gretel in a student production of Hänsel und Gretel and took on the role of Olympia (The Tales of Hoffmann) at the Mittelsächsisches Theater ball.

Leila Schütz performs regularly on the Yiddish music scene. She played the title role of the Glikl-Oratorye, a Yiddish-language work by American composer Alan Bern presented at the Kaisersaal in Erfurt, which blends early music, jazz, klezmer, and 20th-century lied. She regularly performs with the Kadya Trio alongside Alan Bern and Mark Kovnatskiy, with whom she sang at the Krakow Philharmonie in the Four Cultures Festival, as well as at Shtetl Berlin (2025), Yiddish Summer Weimar, and Shalom Musik in Cologne (2026) festivals. In 2026, she will play the lead role of Rose Shoshana Kahan in Togbukh, Alan Bern’s new work, to be performed at the Mon ami Theater in Weimar under the direction of Max Löwenstein.

Alongside her musical studies, Leila obtained a Master's degree in Theatre Studies from the Sorbonne-nouvelle (Paris) in 2018, dedicating her thesis to Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortilèges. As a co-founder of the "Sternflammende Oper Wien" company, Leila also debuted as an opera director. Her staging of Mozart's The Magic Flute was performed at the Theatre of the Vienna Boys' Choir (MuTh) in spring 2019 with young emerging artists. She continued this passion alongside her singing career by co-directing the youth production of Hänsel and Gretel at her university in Dresden, where she also designed the costumes and created the makeup. In September 2026, her production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with her artistic team, the Callisto Collective, will be presented at the Brunswick City Museum.