Emily Misch has been praised by Opera News for her “stratospheric coloratura with scintillating precision” while the Times Argus has called her soprano voice “brilliant and virtuosic.” Misch is one of the most sought-after Queen of the Night and this season will reprise the role for Opera San José and the Glacier Symphony Orchestra, after having performed it for Arizona Opera (2023), Annapolis Opera (2023) and the Glimmerglass Festival (2021).
In 2021 Misch returned to the Glimmerglass Festival to sing in The Magic Flute; The New York Times called her performance “impressive” and “fearsome,” and The Wall Street Journal said her “capable, bright-voice…ably navigated the Queen of the Night’s coloratura.” While there, she also performed the role of Berginella in Songbird, a new adaptation of Offenbach’s La Périchole created by Eric Sean Fogel, James Lowe and Kelley Rourke. Other performances in the 2021-22 season included Madame Goldentrill in The Impresario with Syracuse Opera and Handel’s Messiah with Naples Philharmonic. She also performed as a soloist in Berg’s Wozzeck with Boston Symphony Orchestra. Her 2022-23 season included Musetta in La Bohème with Newport Classical and Carmina Burana with the Cincinnati Ballet and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. In 2023, Misch made her Arizona Opera and Annapolis Opera debut as the Queen of the Night in their productions of Die Zauberflöte. In 2020, Misch “unleashed sparkling coloratura while displaying complete command of her voice every second she was singing as Madame Zamira” (Parterre Box) in American Lyric Theater’s workshop of Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant. Prior to the pandemic, Misch had been scheduled to sing Lora in Die Feen with the Glimmerglass Festival and Lucy in Menotti’s The Telephone at the Newport Music Festival, the soprano solos in Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem (Altoona Symphony Orchestra) and Mozart’s Requiem and Bach’s Mass in F Major (Berkshire Choral International), and to appear in concert with the Mirror Visions Ensemble.
Misch made her Glimmerglass Festival debut in 2019 as Florestine in The Ghosts of Versailles, a role she reprised with Château de Versailles Spectacles in France for her European debut. Other recent roles include Olympia in Les contes d’Hoffmann and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Derrick Wang’s Scalia/Ginsburg with Opera North; Zerlina in Don Giovanni with Opera in Williamsburg; Le feu, La princesse and Le rossignol in L’enfant et les sortilèges with Opera on the Avalon; and Leah in Joel Mandelbaum’s The Dybbuk at Queens College. During her graduate studies at Mannes College of Music, she was heard as the Controller in the New York premiere of Jonathan Dove’s Flight and as Lucia in The Rape of Lucretia.
On the concert stage, Misch has performed as soprano soloist in Mozart’s Requiem and Haydn’s Paukenmesse with Huntington Choral Society, in Carmina Burana with the Altoona Symphony Orchestra and the Westchester Choral Society, in Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (Mater Gloriosa) with Berkshire Choral International, and in Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165 with the Greenville Symphony Orchestra.
A 2018 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions National Finalist, Misch has also been awarded prizes from the Schuyler Foundation for Career Bridges, the Gerda Lissner Foundation, Mannes College, and Yale University. She has been a vocal fellow at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute and has participated in young artist training programs at Wolf Trap Opera Company, Sarasota Opera, Opera North (NH), and Opera on the Avalon. She received a BA in Music from Yale University, where she graduated magna cum laude.