Elena Villalón
About this Artist
Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, several prizes at the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, and both Third Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2023 Operalia Competition, Cuban American soprano Elena Villalón is rapidly gaining recognition as one of the most exciting young voices of her generation.
In the 2025/26 season, she makes a series of highly anticipated company debuts: as Dalinda in a new production of Ariodante at the Royal Opera House, Glauce in Medea at Chicago Opera Theater, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte at Opéra National de Bordeaux, and Fiorilla in Il turco in Italia for her Glyndebourne Festival debut. On the concert platform, she performs Beethoven’s Egmont with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Haydn’s Paukenmesse at the Wiener Konzerthaus.
Villalón, a graduate of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, has also appeared in concert with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, The English Concert and Harry Bicket, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Tiroler Festspiele, and in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Lubbock Symphony in her native Texas. She has appeared in Carmina Burana with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The native of Austin, TX, is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and made her professional debut as a Gerdine Young Artist at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, where she sang Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro and later returned as Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi. Villalón is a recipient of the 2022 Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation and the Richard F. Gold Career Grant from Houston Grand Opera.