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.
The Crane School of Music is located in Potsdam, New York, and is one of three schools which make up the State University of New York (SUNY) at Potsdam.
Dawn Upshaw is an American soprano. She is the recipient of several Grammy Awards and has released a number of Edison Award-winning discs; she performs both opera and art song, and her repertoire spans Baroque to contemporary. Many composers, including Henri Dutilleux, Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams, and Kaija Saariaho, have written for her. In 2007, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2006, she founded the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard College Conservatory in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, serving as artistic director until 2019. She currently serves as head of the Vocal Arts Program at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Dame Felicity Joan Palmer,, is an English mezzo-soprano and music professor. She sang soprano roles until 1983.
Regina Resnik was an American opera singer who had an active international career that spanned five decades. She began her career as a soprano in 1942 and soon after began a lengthy and fruitful relationship with the Metropolitan Opera that spanned from 1944 until 1983. Under the advice of conductor Clemens Krauss, she began retraining her voice in the mezzo-soprano repertoire in 1953 and by 1956 had completely removed soprano literature from her performance repertoire.
Rose Bampton was an American opera singer who had an active international career during the 1930s and 1940s. She began her professional career performing mostly minor roles from the mezzo-soprano repertoire in 1929 but later switched to singing primarily leading soprano roles in 1937 until her retirement from the opera stage in 1963.
Monica 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.
Suzanna Guzmán is an American mezzo-soprano and Emmy Award winning television host. Currently she is the host of the weekly radio program Opera at Noon and On Broadway on 105.1HD4 KMozart. She was also seen as host on television's KCET's weekly series Open Call. As a singer she has performed with international and American opera companies as a principal artist: La traviata at the Metropolitan Opera, La favorite in Montpellier, France, and Goya at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. She is known for her portrayal of the title role in Carmen for Houston Grand Opera's multimedia production, a role she has performed more than 200 times. Recent appearances have been with Spoleto Festival USA, SIFA- Singapore Festival of the Arts, Opera Santa Barbara, Los Angeles Philharmonic and with Latino Theatre Company for 17 seasons as La Virgen in the annual pageant Diós Inatzin: La Virgen de Tepeyac.
Blanche Thebom was an American operatic mezzo-soprano, voice teacher, and opera director. She was part of the first wave of American opera singers that had highly successful international careers. In her own country she had a long association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City which lasted 22 years. Opera News stated, "An ambitious beauty with a velvety, even-grained dramatic mezzo, Thebom was a natural for opera: she commanded the stage with the elegantly disciplined hauteur of an old-school diva, relishing the opportunity to play femmes du monde such as Marina in Boris Godunov, Herodias and Dalila."
Isabel Leonard is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer based in New York City. She is of Argentine ancestry on her mother's side.
Patricia Misslin was an American voice teacher and soprano. She taught voice on the faculties of several American institutions, including the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York at Potsdam, the Manhattan School of Music, and the New England Conservatory. Several of her pupils had prominent careers in the field of opera, including Renée Fleming, Margaret Lattimore, Stephanie Blythe, and Alexandra Deshorties.
Margaret Harshaw was an American opera singer and voice teacher who sang for 22 consecutive seasons at the Metropolitan Opera from November 1942 to March 1964. She began her career as a mezzo-soprano in the early 1930s but then began performing roles from the soprano repertoire in 1950. She sang a total of 39 roles in 25 works at the Met and was heard in 40 of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. She was also active as a guest artist with major opera houses in Europe and North and South America.
Jennifer Johnson Cano is an American operatic mezzo-soprano. Before her college education, she attended St. Pius X High School, graduating in the Class of 2002. While in high school, she was a member of the choir, singing at Mass and state competitions. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Webster University and a Master of Music degree from Rice University where she was a pupil of Kathleen Kaun. In 2008, she won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and in 2009, she won the Young Concert Artists competition and was the recipient of a Sullivan Foundation grant. She was a member of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.
Hanan Alattar is an American operatic soprano who has had an active international career in concerts and in operas since the early 2000s. She has performed with many leading opera companies and orchestras in the United States and Europe, collaborating with such notable conductors as Plácido Domingo, James Conlon and Miguel Harth-Bedoya.
Wallis Giunta is a Canadian mezzo-soprano opera singer performing at leading theatres and opera companies around the world.
Elizabeth Fischer Monastero was an American operatic mezzo-soprano and voice teacher.
Ying Fang is a Chinese operatic soprano. A principal soprano at the Metropolitan Opera, she won the Golden Bell Award at the Guangdong Singing Competition in China in 2009, first prize at the Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition in 2013, and the Lincoln Center Segal Award in 2015. Her performances have been featured on the television program Great Performances at the Met and in movie theaters for the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD. In 2015 Opera News stated that "Ying Fang sings with exquisite simplicity and directness. The twenty-eight-year-old soprano never forces her sound or indulges in coloratura 'flash'. She is incapable of vulgarity; her dignity is unshakeable, and her powers of persuasion are sovereign."
Julia Bullock is a Grammy-winning American soprano originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Anthony Tommasini from The New York Times has called her an "impressive, fast-rising soprano... poised for a significant career”.
Juliana Hall is an American composer of art songs, monodramas, and vocal chamber music. She has been described by the NATS Journal of Singing as "one of our country’s most able and prolific art song composers for almost three decades" and, in discussing her 1989 song cycle Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush, the Journal went on to assert that "Even at this very early stage in her life and career, Hall knew something about crafting music whose beauty could enhance the text at hand without drawing attention away from that text. This is masterful writing in every respect."
Elizabeth Bishop is an American mezzo-soprano and voice teacher. She has sung at the Metropolitan Opera more than 60 times, and is generally known for playing prominent supporting roles in major operas.
