The purpose of this paper is to compute and analyze curvatures of a Stiefel manifold with the family of metrics defined by Hüper, Markina and Silva Leite and its generalizations. It turns out that this family of metrics can be identified with metrics arising from a Cheeger deformation. Using a result of Michor and the Euler-Poisson-Arnold framework, the author derived curvature formulas from a more Lie theoretic point of view, expressing the Ricci curvature in terms of traces constructed from the \(ad\) operator and applied the result to Stiefel manifolds. Estimates for the sectional curvature range are provided. For the special orthogonal group \(\mathrm{SO}(n)\), it is showed that the Ricci curvature has a simple form whenever one enables a larger family of deformation metrics, by generalizing previous results and providing in this way new examples of Einstein metrics. A contribution of the article is provided by the curvature formulas for homogeneous spaces in basis-free forms, in many cases applicable to semi-Riemannian geometry. By making use of a more recently approach, it is proved that one obtains the same curvature formulas. The sectional curvature for the Stiefel manifold equipped with the deformation metric is analyzed. The author shows that the sectional curvature range always contains a specific interval. The ends of the interval are piecewise smooth functions which are described and they correspond to certain root configurations. Benefitting from earlier studies of Einstein metrics on \(\mathrm{SO}(n)\) and \(\mathrm{St}_{p,n}\), the author found that expressing the Ricci curvature in terms of traces gives a simple formula for Ricci curvature for certain metrics generalizing the Cheeger/Jensen metrics, and the flexibility allows the construction of new Einstein metrics. The Ricci curvature can be expressed as a sum of four traces, one is the Killing form and the others are constructed from the adjoint of the \(ad\) operator. A family of diagonal metrics on \(\mathrm{SO}(n)\) and \(\mathrm{St}_{p,n}\) is demonstrated, and formulas for the Ricci curvature are provided in these cases.