EmilyRichter

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  • Soprano

About Emily

Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 Met Opera Laffont Competition, American soprano Emily Richter’s 2025/26 season includes a number of exciting house and role debuts, including Mathilde Guillaume Tell at Hamburg Staatsoper, Mary Stuart Of One Blood at Santa Fe Opera, and as the title role in Handel’s Deidamia at Hudson Opera House, New York . 

Emily was an artist at the Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 2024-26, where she made appearances onstage as First Ancella Medea and First Peasant Le nozze di Figaro, covering the roles of Countess Le nozze di figaro, Fiordiligi Così fan tutte, Claire Devon The Listeners, and Glauce Medea. Previous to this, she was a Resident Artist with Pittsburgh Opera, where role highlights included Iphigénie Iphigénie en Tauride, Countess Le nozze di Figaro, Ma Proving Up, Ginevra Ariodante, and covering Violetta La traviata.

In concert, Emily has sung Handel's Messiah with the Seattle Symphony and the Illinois Philharmonic, and Verdi’s Requiem in her debut with the Westmoreland Symphony. She is a first prize winner of The Wirth Prize and The Mildred Miller Competition.

Emily has spent her summers as a young artist at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Santa Fe Opera, Central City Opera, and Seagle Festival. She graduated with her master’s degree from McGill’s Schulich School of Music and studied her undergraduate degree in Vocal Performance at Lawrence University.

Emily is based in Chicago, USA

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Contact

Angelica Conner

Angelica Conner

Senior Artist Manager
Charlotte Bateman

Charlotte Bateman

Assistant Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

Follow Emily

Season Highlights

Nov 2026
Camerata Chicago
Handel's Messiah
Feb 2027
Hamburg Staatsoper
Guillaume Tell (Mathilde)
Apr 2027 - May 2027
Hudson Opera House, New York
Deidamia (Title Role)
Jul 2027 - Aug 2027
Santa Fe Opera
Of One Blood (Mary Stuart)

Video

Photos

Selected Repertoire

Beethoven

Fidelio (Marzelline - covered)

Bizet

Carmen (Micaëla - covered)

Britten

The Turn of the Screw (Governess)

Cherubini

Medea (Glauce - covered, First Handmaiden)

Dvořák

Rusalka (Second Woodsprite)

Gluck

Iphigénie en Tauride (Iphigénie)

Handel

Alcina (Title Role - covered)   •   Ariodante (Ginevra)

Missy Mazzoli

Proving Up (Ma)   •   The Listeners (Claire Devon - covered)

Mozart

Le nozze di Figaro (Countess)   •   Don Giovanni (Donna Anna)   •   Cosí fan tutte (Fiordiligi - covered)

Rossini

Il barbiere di Siviglia (Berta)   •   Otello (Desdemona - covered)

Verdi

Il trovatore (Ines)   •   La traviata (Violetta - covered)

News

Press

  • Proving Up (Ma Zegner)

    Pittsburgh Opera
    Feb 2024

    • [Emily Richter] sang, of course, gloriously, her powerful and plush soprano voice filling the studio with its wonted brilliance and warmth, but a touch of pathos must have been felt by many in the audience. These are the last performances she will give as a Resident Artist with Pittsburgh Opera... We have not heard the last of her; that she won’t be engaged by Pittsburgh Opera for future productions is unfathomable. Until that time, one of the greatest of vocal artists who have come this way will be very much missed, indeed.

  • Metropolitan Opera 2023-24: Eric and Dominique Laffont Grand Final

    Metropolitan Opera
    Mar 2024

    • Soprano Emily Richter’s performance of Mozart’s “Crudele? … Non mi dir” from “Don Giovanni” was excellent. ...Richter’s dynamic performance kept things engaging before moving on to the aria, where she demonstrated her natural talent for Mozart’s music. Richter delivered Charpentier’s aria “Depuis le jour” from “Louise” with delicate tenderness and a gentle vocal tone for her second-half performance.

  • Iphigénie en Tauride (Iphigénie)

    Pittsburgh Opera
    Jan 2024 - Feb 2024

    • Iphigénie, brilliantly evoked by soprano Emily Richter...

    • Just over the last decade or so, many much-gifted sopranos have come and gone, talented all, but Emily Richter is perhaps the most astonishing of them. A gloriously pure, powerful soprano voice, always under her control, is matched with no little dramatic ability. Her tones ring out, squarely placed, like a golden bell, with plenty of volume and clarity that are quite thrilling. Her voice is fine in all registers, and her breathing technique allows her to send the highest fortissimo to the softest pianissimo sailing out over her audiences. It also allows her to sing true legato; one phrase melts seamlessly into the next. A part such as Iphigénie suits her talents to a tee, and she sings it brilliantly. We’ve also been lucky in that we’ve had the pleasure of watching this star be born.

  • Il trovatore (Ines)

    Pittsburgh Opera
    Mar 2023

  • Ariodante (Ginevra)

    Pittsburgh Opera
    Jan 2023

    • There is a radiance and lighter-than-air quality to Emily Richter’s soprano that was ideally suited to Handel’s alluring melodies. Richter’s trills and runs were exquisite, but it was her ability to caress a long, spinning phrase that was truly special. Her singing in ‘Il mio crudel martoro’, Ginevra’s expression of despair after she has been falsely accused of infidelity and told of Ariodante’s death, was as moving as it was lovely.

    • As to the cast, soprano Emily Richter imbues the role of Ginevra — the eponymous protagonist Ariodante’s object of desire — with sonorous vivacity: joyful when expressing love, and deeply melancholy during the torment when her character thinks she has lost her intended. Her duets with mezzo-soprano Jazmine Olwalia (Ariodante) are scintillating, and the latter’s melancholy aria “Gods! To let me live so as to give me a thousand deaths” is radiant.