Katia Ledoux is the sensation of the season. The opera singer is a guest at the Science Ball for the first time. And she exceeds all expectations here too.

It is an evening that will go down in the annals of opera. Wiener Volksoper, February 1, 2023: Katia Ledoux is on stage, unlike planned. The 32-year-old mezzo-soprano is supposed to play Venus in Jacques Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld”. Just Venus. Just her role. But when Orpheus and his understudy both fall ill, Ledoux takes on both parts – mezzo-soprano and tenor, femininity and masculinity, goddess and human. Without rehearsal, straight into the spotlight. The next day, the world is talking about her. Not only in Vienna, not only in opera circles. Everywhere. Women singing male roles? It happens, but it’s rare.

But Katia Ledoux is not one to follow the rules – either on or off the stage. Black, queer, polyamorous, feminist: her identity is unmistakable. And she wants to be heard. When Lotte de Beer, director of the Volksoper in Vienna, hired Ledoux for her feminist reimagining of Carmen, it quickly became clear that this would not be an off-the-shelf production.

The production divides the audience. While conservative critics dismiss it as “too feminist” or “too woke” in the press, Ledoux receives a flood of emotional letters. “Handwritten, full of passion – only in Vienna,” she tells the French daily newspaper Le Monde. It is moments like these when opera becomes a platform, a stage for voices that are rarely heard.

For Katia Ledoux, opera is more than entertainment – it is political. She tells stories that are meant to move. She fights for marginalized artists, for Black voices, for queer perspectives. Since 2020, she has been involved in the Black Opera Alliance, a movement founded during the early days of Black Lives Matter. She advocates for diversity in an often white, elitist art form. “Opera can provoke, it can shake up and change,” she told Falter in 2024. But she does not believe in “abolition” of problematic works. She loves classic operas like Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”, but she views them critically. “It’s not about banning these works,” she explains, “but about retelling them.”

Today, Ledoux stands as an artist for a new generation of opera. She is not a classic diva, but an uncompromising fighter – for herself and for others. “I am not the singer you expect,” she says in Falter, “but I am the singer I want to be.” Katia Ledoux is tall, present and uncompromising. Her tool? Her voice. Her stage. Her revolt. Also at the Science Ball 2025.