Full Biography
Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the world’s special young singers,” Emily D’Angelo has continued her meteoric rise to firmly establish herself as one of the most exciting and critically acclaimed artists of her generation. Described as “wondrous and powerful” by the New York Times for her recent US recital debut, the mezzo-soprano is the first and only vocalist to have been presented with the Leonard Bernstein Award from the Schleswig Holstein Festival. A 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist, one of Canada’s “Top 30 Under 30” Classical Musicians, and WQXR NYC Public Radio’s “40 Under 40” singers to watch, D’Angelo made her professional operatic debut aged 21, as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro at the Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi. For this performance, broadcast nationwide on Italy’s RAI network, she was awarded the 2016 Monini Prize.
In the 2024/25 season, D’Angelo takes the leading role Jess in the highly anticipated Metropolitan Opera premiere of two-time Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s opera Grounded. She returns to the Berlin State Opera for her role debut of Octavian in Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier, a role she reprises at the Vienna State Opera later in the season. Further in Berlin the mezzo-soprano sings Idamante in Idomeneo next to Rolando Villazón in the title role. At Vienna State Opera D’Angelo revives Donna Elvira and Dorabella in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte. D’Angelo returns to the role of Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro twice: at the Bayerische Staatsoper and at the Metropolitan Opera.
A sought-after concert performer, this season Emily D’Angelo will star at the annual Advent concert of the ZDF, German national television, with Staatskapelle Dresden under the baton of Riccardo Minasi in the atmospheric Frauenkirche in Dresden. She returns to her native Canada to perform Handel’s Messiah with Orchestre Métropolitain under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin in Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal and she joins the RSB orchestra and conductor Vladimir Jurowski for the New Year concerts of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at Konzerthaus Berlin. The mezzo-soprano finishes her concert season as a soloist with Tonkünstler Orchester lead by Alessandro de Marchi in a Haydn program at the Auditorium Grafenegg in Austria.
The 2024/25 season also holds the release of D’Angelo’s awaited second album freezing produced by Deutsche Grammophon. freezing features music by Dowland, Purcell, Kodály, Philip Glass, Randy Newman and Jeanine Tesori, among many more. The album comprises seventeen songs drawn from the folk tradition, art song and beyond. The mezzo-soprano is joined on freezing by Sophia Muñoz (piano), Bruno Helstroffer (electric guitar) and Jonas Niederstadt (bass guitar, synth, percussion).
In recent seasons, Emily D’Angelo made a host of widely acclaimed debuts, cementing her status as one of the opera world’s most in-demand artists. At the Washington National Opera, she created the role of Jess in the world premiere of Tesori’s Grounded. In the past two years she gave her role debuts as Ruggiero in Alcina in a new Richard Jones staging at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; the titular Ariodante in a new production by Robert Carsen at the Paris Opera’s Palais Garnier, her acclaimed interpretation of Sesto (La Clemenza di Tito) in a new production of Laurent Pelly and Juno in Semele at the Bayerische Staatsoper in another new production by Claus Guth. At the Vienna State Opera, the mezzo-soprano gave her house debut as Dorabella in Così fan tutte. Further highlights include her debut as Ottavia (L’incoronazione di Poppea) in her first appearances with the Zurich Opera; her company debut with the Berlin Staatsoper as Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro); her role and house debut as Sesto in La clemenza di Tito at the Royal Opera House in London; her first performances of Idamante in Idomeneo and appearances as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro at the Bavarian State Opera; her company and role debut as Angelina in Rossini’s La cenerentola at Semperoper Dresden; her first performances as Prince Charming in Massenet’s Cinderella (broadcast Live in HD) in a return to the Metropolitan Opera; her house debut as Dorabella in Così fan tutte and her role debut as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni at Teatro alla Scala; her company debut at Paris Opera presenting, in another role debut, Siebel in Gounod’s Faust in tandem with performances as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia; and her Festival Aix-en-Provence debut in her premiere appearance as Orphée in the Gluck/Berlioz Orphée et Eurydice.
D’Angelo has triumphed in numerous international competitions, winning first prize in the Metropolitan Opera Competition, the Canadian Opera Company Competition, the George London Foundation Competition, the Gerda Lissner Competition, Innsbruck’s Cesti Competition, and the Operalia Competition, where a historic win included First Prize, the Zarzuela Prize, the Birgit Nilsson Prize and Audience Prize. She has also received prizes from the Neue Stimmen International Singing Competition and the Concours musical international de Montréal (CMIM). During her tenure as a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Program, Emily D’Angelo performed the role of Annio in La clemenza di Tito, Second Lady in The Magic Flute, and Soeur Mathilde in Dialogues des Carmélites, which was conducted by music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and broadcast in movie theaters across the world as part of the Met’s Live in HD series. She was Dorabella in Così fan tutte for the Santa Fe Opera and the Canadian Opera Company, where she has also appeared as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia – a role she debuted at the Glimmerglass Festival in a new production by Francesca Zambello in 2018.
Emily D’Angelo is a keen recitalist and regularly performs in storied concert halls, collaborating with the world’s most acclaimed orchestras, ensembles, and conductors. In 2024 she gave her solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall and recently returned to New York’s Park Avenue Armory, performing songs of her debut album enargeia. Emily D’Angelo was the Spotlight Artist at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in the 2023-24 season presenting Alban Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder and the orchestral suite of her Deutsche Grammophon debut album enargeia. On the anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s death, she sang his Requiem in Salzburg with the Camerata Salzburg and at the Salzburg Summer Festival under the baton of Manfred Honeck. She debuted Alma Mahler’s Sieben Lieder under the musical direction of Anja Bihlmaier in Madrid and sang Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Raphael Pichon. With the English Concert and Harry Bicket, D’Angelo made her debut at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium in the title role of Handel’s Serse, with further concert performances in the UK and Spain in 2023. The mezzo-soprano performed a Donizetti/Rossini program with the Prague Philharmonic at Rudolfinum, and presented recitals at the Konserthuset Stockholm, Toronto’s Koerner Hall, Barcelona’s Auditori, and the Peralada Music Festival, among others. In 2021, she recorded a recital program at the Kennedy Center for Vocal Arts DC, which continues to stream online via Deutsche Grammophon’s DG Stage+ platform.
Additional performances have included diverse repertoire such as Respighi’s Il tramonto with Quartet 212 at the Princeton University Concert Series, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with the Montclair Orchestra, the world premiere of Ana Sokolović’s song cycle dawn always begins in the bones, Unsuk Chin’s snagS&Snarls, and the Canadian premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s The Orphic Moment at the Toronto Contemporary Music Festival. She has further appeared in recitals under the auspices of the Park Avenue Armory, the New York Morgan Library Recital Series, Toronto’s Koerner Hall, the Los Angeles SongFest Recital Series, the Santa Fe Festival of Song, Teatro del Lago in Chile, and The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach.
D’Angelo can be heard performing Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music in a Grammy-nominated and JUNO Award-winning live recording with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra; in excerpts from West Side Story on Decca’s “The Magic of Mantovani”; and in Ravel’s Cinq mélodies populaires grecques with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on their album “Odyssey,” which was filmed and recorded at the Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center in Athens for the first ever international production of PBS “Live From Lincoln Center.”
Emily D’Angelo is a Deutsche Grammophon exclusive recording artist. Her debut album enargeia presents music from the 12th and 21st centuries by the composers Hildegard von Bingen, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Missy Mazzoli and Sarah Kirkland Snider, and is described by the artist herself as a “a soundworld, bound together by the multisensory ancient concept of enargeia.” It was named one of the 50 best albums of 2021 by NPR, the best Canadian classical album of 2021 by the CBC, was featured on NPR’s 100 best songs of 2021, and received JUNO and Gramophone awards in 2022.
Toronto-born D’Angelo is a graduate of the University of Toronto, the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio, and the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute.
© CSAM, August 2024
