Angel Blue
About this Artist
Soprano Angel Blue’s importance in opera today cannot be overstated. In September 2019 she opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2019/20 season as Bess in a new production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, for which she won a Grammy Award in the Best Opera Recording category. She reprised this role at the Met in autumn 2021, immediately following her triumphant role debut as Destiny/Loneliness/Greta in the Met’s historic 2021/22 season opener of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the first production at the Metropolitan Opera by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard, and also a Grammy winner. In addition, she was the 2020 recipient of the Met’s prestigious Beverly Sills Award—as the first African American artist to receive this honor—and in 2022 she won the Richard Tucker Award.
The 2022/23 season was a display of Blue’s immense versatility and virtuosity on the operatic and concert stage. She opened Houston Grand Opera’s season with her house debut as Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata, in a production co-starring tenor Bryan Hymel and conducted by Matthew Aucoin; she sang Violetta later in the spring of 2023 at the Metropolitan Opera. The California native returned to longtime collaborator the Los Angeles Opera performing the title role in Puccini’s Tosca, with Michael Fabiano, Gregory Kunde, Ryan McKinney, and the Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv. In spring 2023, Blue appeared as Aida at the Royal Opera House.
Angel Blue has appeared in recital and in concert in more than 35 countries. Important orchestral engagements have included Porgy and Bess at the Berliner Philharmoniker under Sir Simon Rattle and with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Marin Alsop; Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Münchener Philharmoniker under the baton of Zubin Mehta; and Verdi’s Requiem in Sydney, Australia, with Oleg Caetani. Blue debuted in recital at the Ravinia Festival in August 2019, after which she joined many of her international colleagues at the 2019 Richard Tucker Gala at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Angel Blue was born and raised in California and completed her musical studies at UCLA.