“lively, incisive soprano”
New York Times
American soprano Emily Pogorelc has quickly become one of the most exciting voices of her generation, praised for her radiant lyric coloratura, crystalline tone, and captivating stage presence. Since her acclaimed 2024 Metropolitan Opera debut, where OperaWire noted she “lit up the stage every time,” she has established herself as a rising star on the world’s great stages.
Emily Pogorelc’s 2026/27 season opens with her house debut at Deutsche Oper Berlin as Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, followed by a return to the role with the Metropolitan Opera. She makes her house and role debut at the Royal Opera House as Despina in a new production of Così fan tutte directed by Netia Jones and conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock, and returns to the Wiener Staatsoper as Adina in L’elisir d’amore. The season also brings her role debut as Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail in a return to the Bayerische Staatsoper, and her debut with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem under Nathalie Stutzmann. Additional engagements include Rossini’s Stabat Mater in Utrecht and Amsterdam, Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester at the Rheingau Musik Festival, and a return concert appearance alongside Rolando Villazón at Musikfest Bremen.
The 2025/26 season brought house and role debuts as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier at Opernhaus Zürich and as Nannetta in Falstaff at the Wiener Staatsoper, alongside Pamina in Rolando Villazón’s new Die Zauberflöte at Salzburg’s Mozartwoche, later reprised for her Spanish debut at the Santander Festival, where Scherzo praised her performance as one that “dazzled… with a polished legato.” She returned to the Bayerische Staatsoper as Marie in The Bartered Brideand made her Dutch National Opera debut as Susanna in Kirill Serebrennikov’s Le nozze di Figaro, followed by Juliette in Roméo et Juliette at Semperoper Dresden. On the concert stage, she collaborated twice with Manfred Honeck — with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and in her Pittsburgh Symphony debut in Handel’s Messiah — and made her role and company debut with Washington Concert Opera as Leïla in Les pêcheurs de perles, praised by Washington Classical Review for a performance “entirely credible as the beautiful priestess with the mysterious and powerful voice.”
In 2023/24 and 2024/25, Pogorelc made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Lisette in La rondine, broadcast worldwide in Live in HD, and was reengaged as Musetta and Pamina in La bohème and Die Zauberflöte. She debuted her first Violetta in La traviata at Detroit Opera, later reprised at Semperoper Dresden, and made a Dallas Opera debut as Musetta. She expanded her repertoire with role debuts as Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor), Ilia (Idomeneo), and Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis), and returned to Semperoper Dresden as Amina in Rolando Villazón’s La sonnambula, a role she had debuted there to great acclaim.
Concert highlights included her Salzburg Easter Festival debut in Mendelssohn’s Elias, a last-minute Salzburg Festival debut in the Mozart Matinee recorded for Arte, Mozart’s Requiem with the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, her Rotterdam Philharmonic debut, and performances in Bucharest and Ljubljana with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Quartet.
Highlights of previous seasons include her recital debut at the Kennedy Center, her acclaimed Juliette (Roméo et Juliette) in her hometown of Milwaukee, and several important debuts during her ensemble tenure at the Bayerische Staatsoper, where she sang roles such as Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel), Ilia (Idomeneo), and Adina (L’elisir d’amore) Sofia (Il signor Bruschino) and Soeur Constance (Dialogues des Carmélites).
“But the stand-out feature here is the sensational contribution of American soprano Emily Pogorelc, who is rapidly becoming a star on the European operatic scene. Her singing here has superb technical sureness, state-of-the-art command of the music’s wild emotional switchbacks and firework-display virtuosity to match…The far finer expressive range and sensibility of Paisiello’s idiom reveals her as an artist of much soul as well as brilliance.”
Malcolm Hayes, BBC Music [December 2023]
2021 Winner
2020-24 ENSEMBLE MEMBER
2020 Luminarts Fellow
Beyond the classics, Pogorelc is a passionate champion of new music. With Opera Philadelphia, she sang in works including Daniel Schnyder’s Charlie Parker’s Yardbird (at Apollo Theatre in NYC) and David Hertzberg’s The Rose Elf. She also recorded Summer Night, Riverside by fellow Curtis alumna Andrew Hsu as a single for Deutsche Grammophon.
A prize winner in the 2021 Operalia Competition at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, she was also the youngest finalist and the recipient of The Ginette Theano Prize for Most Promising Talent at the inaugural Glyndebourne Opera Cup. She was a previous recipient of the Lynne Cooper Harvey Foundation Award from the Musicians Club of Women and the 2020 Luminarts Classical Voice Fellowship.
Ms Pogorelc is a former member of The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago and a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music. She has participated in residencies at Aix-en-Provence Festival (Mozart Académie) and the Britten–Pears Young Artist Programme at Snape Maltings, in conjunction with the Aldeburgh Festival (Singing Britten Residency).
Ms. Pogorelc is a proud native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Previous Awards
- Carolyn Bailey and Dominick Argento Vocal Competition | 1st Prize
- Hal Leonard Art Song Competition | 1st Place
- Gerda Lissner/Liederkranz Foundation’s Lieder/Art Song competition | Grant Recipient
- Opera Index Emerging Artist Award | Recipient
- Classical Singer Magazine Competition | 1st Place
- Schmidt Competition | 1st Place
- Wisconsin Conservatory of Music Art Song Festival | 1st Place
- NFAA YoungArts (Gold Award in Classical Voice division) | 2014 Gold Award winner
- National Public Radio’s “From the Top” | Featured in June 2014