Michelle Bradley

Michelle Bradley, a 2018 graduate of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, is beginning to garner great acclaim as one of today’s most promising Verdi sopranos.
 

For the remainder of the 2020-2021 season, Ms. Bradley will make debuts with Houston Grand Opera in its production of Breaking the Waves by Missy Mazzoli and a production of Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk with Opera Theater St. Louis. She will also be presented in recital with Brian Zeger at Philadelphia Chamber Music Society on January 31st, 2021.
 

Last season, Ms. Bradley made debuts with the Vienna State Opera as Leonora in Il Trovatore (a role debut), the San Francisco Opera’s virtual performance of Ernani as Elvira (another role debut), the San Diego Opera as the title role of Aida and will return to the Metropolitan Opera for their New Year’s Eve Gala as Liù in Act II of Turandot. 

She also appeared in solo recital at the Kennedy Center and performed Samuel Barber’s Knoxville, Summer of 1915 with the New World Symphony.  Future projects include debuts with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and returns to the Metropolitan Opera, all in leading roles.

In the 2018-2019 season, the soprano made a string of notable debuts with Oper Frankfurt for Leonora in a new production of La Forza del Destino, with Opéra national de Lorraine and Theater Erfurt for the title role in Aida, and at Deutsche Oper Berlin for the soprano solo in staged performances of the Verdi Requiem. In concert, she debuted in Paris as the soprano solo in Sir Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time with the Orchestre de Paris under Thomas Adès, sang the soprano solo in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin and sang in recital under the auspices of the George London Foundation in Miami and New York City. 
 

Prior to that, Ms. Bradley returned to the Metropolitan Opera as Clotilde in the new David McVicar production of Norma. She also appeared in Santiago de Chile as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. On the concert stage the soprano made her debut at the May Festival in the Verdi Requiem, sang the Vier letzte Lieder by Richard Strauss with the Santa Cruz Symphony, performed a program of Chausson and Caplet chamber works with the New World Symphony and gave solo recitals in Palm Beach and Santiago de Chile.
 

In the Metropolitan Opera’s 2016-2017 season, the soprano made debuts in Mozart’s Idomeneo and as the High Priestess in Verdi’s Aida. Other engagements included recitals at the Théâtre du Châtelet, New York’s Park Avenue Armory and a return to Santa Cruz for Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. 

In January 2016, Ms. Bradley performed in Carnegie Hall’s Neighborhood Recital Series in honor of Marilyn Horne, and in the following May, she made her debut singing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Santa Cruz Symphony Orchestra. 
 

Michelle Bradley is a winner of the 2018 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, the 2017 recipient of the Leonie Rysanek Award from the George London Foundation, the 2017 Lissner Charitable Fund Award from Opera Index, a 2017 Sullivan Foundation Award winner, the 2016 recipient of the Hildegard Behrens Foundation Award, and a first place winner in the Gerda Lissner and the Serge and Olga Koussevitzky vocal competitions. She is the 2014 grand prize winner of The Music Academy of the West’s Marilyn Horne Song Competition and in May 2015, was presented in a nationwide recital tour as part of her prize.
 

Ms. Bradley received her Masters of Music in Vocal Performance from Bowling Green State University. She has studied under Andrew W. Smith, Wilhelmenia Fernandez, Myra Merrit, Lois Alba, and Diana Soviero. She has also participated in master classes with Stephanie Blythe, Anne Sofie von Otter, Marilyn Horne, Deborah Voigt, James Morris, and Renata Scotto.

Photo Credit: Dario Acosta