Career
Gilmore made her professional opera debut in 2004 at the Glimmerglass Opera as The Lady Saphir in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience . In 2007 she portrayed Zerlina in the Orlando Opera Company and Amato Opera Theatre's co-production of Don Giovanni which starred Peter Edelmann in the title role. In 2009 she performed the part of Zerbinetta in the Indianapolis Opera's production Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos ; a part she later reprised at the Boston Lyric Opera in 2010 and the Glimmerglass Festival in 2014.
Gilmore made her unexpected debut at the Metropolitan Opera on 23 December 2009 as the cover for Kathleen Kim in the role of Olympia in the opera The Tales of Hoffmann . She had less than four hours' notice that she would sing that night, and the curtain was even briefly held past 20:00 to allow her to walk the stage. [4] She interpolated a high A-flat (A♭6) into Olympia's aria, which, at the time, was conjectured to be the highest note to have ever been sung on the stage of the Met. [3] She later sang the role of Olympia at La Scala in 2012, the Bavarian State Opera in 2014, the Hawaii Opera Theatre in 2017, and the Teatro Colón in 2019.
In 2010 Gilmore performed the title role in the Swiss premiere of Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland at the Grand Théâtre de Genève; a role she later performed again with the Los Angeles Opera and Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2015. In 2011 she appeared at the Knoxville Opera as Elvira in I puritani and as Le Feu in L'Enfant et les sortilèges at the Bavarian State Opera. In 2012 she sang the role of Cunegonde in Candide with the Portland Opera.
In 2013 Gilmore made her debut at the Opéra de Lille in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor . She later sang that role again at the Virginia Opera in 2018. Also in 2013, Gilmore appeared at La Monnaie as Ophelia in Hamlet ; portrayed the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute with Opera Philadelphia; and appeared as Amina in the Florida Grand Opera's production of La sonnambula . In 2014 she performed the role of Gilda in Rigoletto with both Opera Omaha and Opera Colorado.
In 2015 Gilmore portrayed Blonde in the Aix-en-Provence Festival's production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail ; a role she repeated that year at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. In 2016 she portrayed Gretel in Hansel and Gretel for her debut at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. That same year she sang the role of Sophie in Werther at the Boston Lyric Opera, and returned to the Glimmerglass Festival as Ninetta in La gazza ladra in addition to performing as the soprano soloist in Joseph Haydn's The Creation with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
In 2017 Gilmore made her debut at the Austin Lyric Opera as Marie in The Daughter of the Regiment , and in 2018 she returned to Opera Omaha as Nanette in Falstaff .
Renée Lynn Fleming is an American soprano and actress, known for performances in opera, concerts, recordings, theater, film, and at major public occasions. A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Fleming has been nominated for 18 Grammy Awards and has won five times. In June 2023, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that Fleming would be one of the five artists recognized at the 2023 Kennedy Center Honors, which she received in December 2023. Other notable honors won by Fleming have included the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur from the French government, Germany's Cross of the Order of Merit, Sweden's Polar Music Prize and honorary membership in England's Royal Academy of Music. Unusual among artists whose careers began in opera, Fleming has achieved name recognition beyond the classical music world. In May, 2023, Fleming was appointed by the World Health Organization as a Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health. On April 9, 2024, Penguin Random House published Fleming's anthology Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness, a collection of essays about the health benefits of music and the arts, by scientists from leading research institutions, practitioners, educators, arts leaders, musicians, artists and writers.
Phyllis Curtin was an American soprano and academic teacher who had an active career in operas and concerts from the early 1950s through the 1980s. She is known for her creation of roles in operas by Carlisle Floyd, such as the title role in Susannah and Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights. She was a dedicated song recitalist, who retired from singing in 1984. She was named Boston University's Dean Emerita, College of Fine Arts in 1991.
Frances Yeend was an American classical soprano who had an active international career as a concert and opera singer during the 1940s through the 1960s. She had a long and fruitful association with the New York City Opera (NYCO) between 1948 and 1958, after which she joined the roster of principal sopranos at the Metropolitan Opera where she sang between 1961 and 1963. She also had an extensive concert career, particularly in the United States. By 1963 she had sung in more than 200 orchestral concerts in North American with major symphonies like the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra among others.
Laura Claycomb is an American lyric coloratura soprano singer.
Deborah Cook was an American operatic soprano who had a prolific international opera career during the 1970s and 1980s. Her career was primarily focused in Germany where she lived from 1972 through 1985. However, she did travel extensively throughout Europe and in the United States, performing in operas, concerts, recitals, and recording for radio productions. A gifted coloratura soprano, Cook sang a wide repertoire that encompassed English, German, French, and Italian opera from a variety of musical periods. She notably sang in a number of world premieres including Hans Werner Henze's We Come to the River at the Royal Opera, London in 1976.
Amanda Forsythe is an American light lyric soprano who is particularly admired for her interpretations of baroque music and the works of Rossini. Forsythe has received continued critical acclaim from many publications including Opera News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe.
Monica Yunus is a Bangladeshi-American operatic soprano who has performed with many opera companies and music ensembles. She is the daughter of Bangladeshi social entrepreneur, banker, Nobel laureate economist and eventual chief adviser Muhammad Yunus. About her singing quality reviewers from US dailies, The New York Times, the Charleston City Paper and the Palm Beach Daily News have described her voice as "especially winning", "utterly captivating" and "a voice destined for super-stardom" respectively. Her voice's performance range lies from a low A (A3) to a high F (F6). She performed regularly at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 2003-2014; appearing in several broadcasts of Metropolitan Opera Live in HD.
Diana Damrau is a German soprano who has achieved international fame for her performances, primarily in opera, but also in concert and lieder. She has been successful in coloratura soprano roles since her early career, and gradually proceeded into heavier roles of the 19th-century Italian bel canto repertoire. Her signature roles include the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute, Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, and Violetta in La traviata.
Alice in Wonderland is a 2007 operatic adaptation of the novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll. It is the first opera of Korean composer Unsuk Chin, who co-wrote the English libretto with the Asian-American playwright David Henry Hwang.
Michael Maniaci is an American opera singer. Possessing a male soprano voice, Maniaci is noted for his claim to be able to sing into the upper soprano range without resorting to falsetto, an otherwise common phonation for men who sing in high registers, such as countertenors. Although this was possible for castrati because of the hormonal imbalance following castration, Maniaci claims that, for some unknown reason, his larynx did not develop and lengthen completely during puberty, causing his voice not to "break" in the usual manner. Maniaci claims that this physical particularity has given him the ability to sing in the soprano register without sounding like a typical countertenor or a female singer. There are, however, critics who claim that Maniaci actually sings in falsetto.
Arianna Zukerman is an American lyric soprano who has performed with some of the world's finest orchestras and opera companies. Her voice was described in The Washington Post as "remarkable" combining the "range, warmth and facility of a Rossini mezzo with shimmering, round high notes and exquisite pianissimos."
Joy Clements was an American lyric coloratura soprano who had a substantial opera and concert career from 1956 through the late 1970s. She notably sang regularly with both the New York City Opera and the Metropolitan Opera during the 1960s through the early 1970s. She also traveled regularly for performances with opera companies and orchestras throughout the United States but only appeared in a relatively few number of performances internationally.
Margaret Lloyd is an American soprano who is particularly known for her performances in contemporary operas and concert works. She has sung in the world premieres of several operas, most notably portraying the role of Lightfoot McClendon in the premiere of Carlisle Floyd's Cold Sassy Tree at the Houston Grand Opera in 2000. She has also sung in the world premieres of several works by composer Michael Torke.
Adelaide Bishop was an American operatic soprano, musical theatre actress, opera director, stage director, and voice teacher. She began her career appearing in Broadway musicals as a teenager during the early 1940s. She became a principal soprano with the New York City Opera (NYCO) in 1948, where she performed through 1960 in a broad repertoire encompassing German, French, Italian, and English operas from a variety of musical periods. In the late 1950s, she started working actively as a stage director and as a voice teacher, working with many opera companies throughout the United States and serving on the music faculties of several different American universities. She also served as the artistic director of the Wolf Trap Opera for many years.
Lauren Flanigan is an American operatic soprano who has had an active international career since the 1980s. She enjoyed a particularly fruitful partnership with the New York City Opera, appearing with the company almost every year since 1990. She has sung more than 100 different opera roles on stage during her career, often appearing in contemporary works or more rarely staged operas. Opera News stated that, "Flanigan has enjoyed one of the most distinctive careers of any artist of her generation, one marked by a high volume of contemporary works. Modern composers love her because of her innate musicality, dramatic power and lightning-fast skills and instincts."
Roberta Alexander is an American operatic soprano. She began her career as a lyric soprano in 1975 and spent the next three decades performing principal roles with opera houses internationally. Particularly celebrated for her performances of Mozart heroines, she was a leading soprano at the Metropolitan Opera from 1983 to 1991. In addition to principal Mozart roles like Countess Almaviva, Elettra, Fiordiligi, and Donna Elvira, she had particular success with the parts of Mimì in Puccini's La bohème and the title role in Janáček's Jenůfa. More recently she has performed secondary character roles on stage, including performances at the Grand Théâtre de Provence in 2013, La Scala in 2014, and La Monnaie in 2015. She performed the Fifth Maid in Strauss's Elektra at the Met in 2016 and Curra in Verdi's La forza del destino at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 2019.
Heidi Stober is an American operatic soprano who has performed leading roles in major opera houses internationally, including the Dutch National Opera, the Garsington Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the Municipal Theatre of Santiago, the Semperoper, and the Vienna State Opera. She has been particularly active with the Houston Grand Opera where she has performed in more than a dozen operas since 2004, including the world premieres of Daniel Catán's Salsipuedes: a Tale of Love, War and Anchovies (2004), Mark Adamo's Lysistrata (2005), and Ricky Ian Gordon's The House without a Christmas Tree (2017). She has also performed in more than ten operas with the San Francisco Opera since 2010. Since 2008 she has been a resident artist at the Deutsche Oper Berlin where she has primarily performed roles from the lyric soprano repertoire. Also active as a concert soprano on the international stage, she has performed with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest among other orchestras. She is particularly admired for her interpretations of the works of George Frideric Handel and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Agnieszka Beata Mikołajczyk, better known by her stage name Aga Mikolaj, was a Polish operatic soprano who made an international career.
Emily Pogorelc is an American operatic soprano. She is a member of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and has performed leading roles internationally.
Sheri Greenawald is an American soprano and music educator who had a performance career in concerts and operas during the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century. She has portrayed principal roles in the world premieres of several operas, including works by composers Leonard Bernstein, Daniel Catán, Carlisle Floyd, Thomas Pasatieri, and Stephen Paulus. She has performed leading roles with opera companies in the US and abroad, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Bavarian State Opera, La Fenice, and Paris Opera. She was particularly active as a performer with the Santa Fe Opera and San Francisco Opera. A former member of the voice faculty at the Boston Conservatory, she served as director of the San Francisco Opera Center from 2002 through 2020.
