Performance Year: 2019, 2022
Colombian-American soprano Vanessa Vasquez, winner of the 2017 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, has been a resident artist at the prestigious Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, where she has been heard as Mimì in La bohème, Gilda in Rigoletto, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, and Violetta in La traviata. At Dallas Opera she has sung Micaëla in Carmen, followed by Violetta in La traviata at Arizona Opera, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte for Lyric Opera of Kansas City, and engagements with the Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia as Mimi in La bohème.
She made her professional opera debut in summer 2017 as Liù in Turandot with Des Moines Metro Opera. With Oberlin in Italy, she performed Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, and at Wolf Trap Opera she sang Juliette in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. On the concert stage, she debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra in J.S. Bach’s cantata Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich and with the New York Choral Society in Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass. She made her debut with the New York Philharmonic as soprano soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and she was soprano soloist in Honegger’s King David and Poulenc’s Gloria with Voices of Ascension. She was a featured soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin in the Academy of Music 160th Anniversary Concert and Ball. At Santa Fe Opera in 2021 she again sang the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, and 2022 finds her as Micaëla in Arizona Opera’s Carmen.
Ms. Vasquez is the recipient of a 2017 Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, first prize in the 2017 Gerda Lissner Foundation Competition, first prize in the 2016 Licia Albanese Competition, first prize in the 2016 Giulio Gari Competition, first prize in the 2016 Loren L. Zachary Vocal Competition, and first prize and Audience Award in the Phoenix Opera Southwest Vocal Competition, among others.
Vanessa Vasquez graduated from the Catholic University of America with a Bachelor of Music degree. She went on to complete a Master of Music degree at UCLA, where she performed Susanna in Wolf-Ferrari’s Il segreto di Susanna, and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni. Ms. Vasquez is a native of Scottsdale, Arizona.
