"[4] Battle was awarded a scholarship to the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music, where she studied voice with Franklin Bens and also worked with Italo Tajo.

In 1972, her second year as a teacher, a friend and fellow church choir member phoned her and informed her that the conductor Thomas Schippers was holding auditions in Cincinnati.

At her audition Schippers engaged her to sing as the soprano soloist in Brahms' German Requiem at the 1972 Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy.

Battle made her professional operatic debut in 1975 as Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville with the Michigan Opera Theatre in Detroit.

During this period, she received three Grammy awards for her recordings: Kathleen Battle Sings Mozart (1986), Salzburg Recital (1987), and Ariadne auf Naxos (1987).

Battle's 1986 collaboration with guitarist Christopher Parkening entitled Pleasures of Their Company was nominated for the Classical Album of the Year Grammy award.

She also received the Laurence Olivier Award (1985) for her stage performance as Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Royal Opera House, London.

[17] In the same year, she returned to Covent Garden to sing Norina in Don Pasquale and performed in a series of solo recitals in California, as well as appearing at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Accompanied by pianist Margo Garrett, she sang arias and songs by Handel, Mozart, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin and Richard Strauss, as well as several traditional spirituals.

[20] In December 1993 she was joined by Martin Katz and Kenny Barron on piano and Grady Tate (drums), Grover Washington Jr. (saxophone) and David Williams (bass) at Carnegie Hall for a concert featuring the music of Handel, Haydn, and Duke Ellington as well as Christmas spirituals.

[22] Between 1990 and 1993, she performed in several productions at the Metropolitan Opera: Rosina in The Barber of Seville (1990), Pamina in The Magic Flute (1991 and 1993), and Adina (with Luciano Pavarotti as Nemorino) in L'elisir d'amore (1991, 1992, and the Met's 1993 Japan Tour).

[15] She also won her fifth Grammy Award in 1993, singing the title role of Semele on the Deutsche Grammophon recording conducted by John Nelson.

[23] Although Battle gave several critically praised performances at the Metropolitan Opera during the early 1990s, her relationship with the company's management showed increasing signs of strain during those years.

[25] In February 1994, during rehearsals for an upcoming production of La fille du régiment at the Metropolitan Opera, Battle was said to have subjected her fellow performers to "withering criticism" and made "almost paranoid demands that they not look at her.

Volpe called Battle's conduct "profoundly detrimental to the artistic collaboration among all the cast members" and indicated that he had "canceled all offers that have been made for the future.

"[25] Any input that Metropolitan Opera music director James Levine (Battle’s close friend and collaborator for 20 years) may have had is shrouded in mystery.

She was a featured guest artist on the May 1994 album Tenderness, singing a duet, "My Favorite Things", with Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Al Jarreau.

In 1995 she presented a program of opera arias and popular songs at Lincoln Center with baritone Thomas Hampson, conductor John Nelson, and the Orchestra of St.

In solo recitals she performed in cities including Los Angeles, New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago in programs that featured art songs from a variety of eras and regions, opera arias, and spirituals.

[32] In June 2001, she and frequent collaborator soprano Jessye Norman performed Vangelis' Mythodea at the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, Greece.

[35] In October 2007, at a fundraiser for the Keep a Child Alive Charity, Kathleen Battle and Alicia Keys performed the song Miss Sarajevo written by U2's Bono.

Her jazz and crossover repertoire includes the compositions of Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, André Previn, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Stevie Wonder among others.

Collaborations with other classical artists include flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal, soprano Jessye Norman, mezzo-sopranos Frederica von Stade and Florence Quivar, violinist Itzhak Perlman, baritone Thomas Hampson, tenors Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and guitarist Christopher Parkening.