EmmaMarhefka

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  • Soprano

About Emma

Emma Marhefka is a rising young soprano praised for her “radiant lyricism” and “scene-stealing” characters. A 2025 Grand Finals Winner in the Metropolitan Opera Laffont, she is now in her second year of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. In the Met’s 2026–27 season, she will appear as Pamina in The Magic Flute and Madeleine Audebert in Silent Night before making her company debut as Musetta in La Bohème with Seattle Opera.

Last season, she made her Met debut as Papagena in The Magic Flute followed by her highly anticipated role and company debut as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Additionally, she appeared as the soprano soloist in The Philadelphia Orchestra’s All Mozart program and Mahler’s Symphony No.4 with The Brevard Music Center.

Previous season engagements include Musetta at the Santa Fe Opera, Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel at Opera Montana, Sandrina in Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera at Arizona Opera, Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi at Opera Tampa, Younger Alyce in Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied at Knoxville Opera and Opera Roanoke, Frasquita in Carmen at Des Moines Metro Opera, and Adina (cover) in L’Elisir d’Amore at the Santa Fe Opera. 

On the concert stage, she has appeared as the soprano soloist in Vivaldi’s Gloria with The New Choral Society and Arthur Honegger’s King David with The New York Choral Society at Alice Tully Hall. During her studies at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, she appeared as Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Mary Johnson in Gregory Spears’s Fellow Travelers, the title role of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, and Valeria in the world premiere of Cipullo’s Mayo at the Crane School of Music. In addition to her success in the Laffont Competition, she was a two-time winner of the Corbett Opera Scholarship Competition and a 2023 finalist in Houston Grand Opera’s Eleanor McCollum Competition.

She is an alumna of Arizona Opera’s Marion Roose Pullin Studio Artist Program, the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Artist Program, the Wolf Trap Opera Studio, the Des Moines Metro Opera Apprentice Artist Program, and the Janiec Opera Company of the Brevard Music Center. She holds degrees in voice from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam.

Emma is based in New York, USA

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Contact

Kate Robson

Kate Robson

Associate Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

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Season Highlights

Dec 2026
Metropolitan Opera, New York
The Magic Flute (Pamina) Nicholas Carter (Conductor) Julie Taymor (Director)
Mar 2027 - Apr 2027
Metropolitan Opera, New York
Kevin Puts' Silent Night (Madeleine Audbert) Dalia Stasevska (Conductor) James Robinson (Director)
May 2027
Seattle Opera
La boheme (Musetta) Roberto Kalb (Conductor) James Robinson (Director)

Video

Photos

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Selected Repertoire

Bizet

Carmen (Frasquita)

Cipullo

Glory Denied (Younger Alyce)

Donizetti

L’elisir D’amore (Adina)

Gounod

Roméo et Juliette (Juliette)

Humperdinck

Hänsel und Gretel (Gretel)

Janáček

The Cunning Little Vixen (Vixen)

Mozart

Die Zauberflote (Pamina)   •   La finta giardiniera (Sandrina)   •   Le nozze di Figaro (Susanna)

Puccini

La bohème (Musetta)

Spears

Fellow Travelers (Mary Johnson)

Weber

Der Freischütz (Ännchen)

News

Press

  • Romeo et Juliette (Juliette)

    Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
    Jun 2026

    • Soprano Emma Marhefka is small, but what a voice! She triumphs in all the coloratura decorations that fill this song...sit back and soak in that vocal glory.

    • Marhefka charts the evening’s most significant journey, carrying Juliet from youthful exuberance and certainty toward hard-won understanding. Marhefka uses the aria to establish the emotional ground beneath the entire performance. Experience, loss and consequence gradually reshape that confidence, and Marhefka traces every step of the transformation.

    • Starring as Juliet, Marhefka is a triumph. Her voice is simply stunning. Her commanding performance, arguably the best of this season, accentuates the catastrophe that befalls her character.

    • Soprano Emma Marhefka makes a flawless debut as Juliet. Her large, agile voice handles the brisk tempo of “Je veux vivre” beautifully. She captures Juliet’s irrepressible joie de vivre there, while making her later despair indisputably affecting.

    • Emma Marhefka’s stunning Juliet eclipsed the memory of any other singer I have ever heard in the role. She is lithe and credibly youthful, her natural stage presence commands attention, and her silvery yet ample lyric soprano is a perfect fit for the demands of Gounod’s rangy writing. Ms. Marhefka’s radiant lyricism is complemented by a thorough embodiment of the dramatic arc of the young girl’s journey. Poised, polished, and potent, her thrilling account of the Poison Aria nearly stopped the show. There is likely not anyone in Operadom performing this role better right now.

    • Juliet (Emma Marhefka): A true star, the soprano possesses a trilling, crystalline voice that conveys Juliet’s naive grace and inner beauty.

    • I was, on the whole, impressed with the cast of Roméo, and most of all with Emma Marhefka, who made for a congenial Juliette and perhaps the most complete young singer I heard at the festival. Marhefka dispatched Juliette’s coloratura with security and ease, and her luminous sound remained even throughout her range and across a wide variety of dynamic shadings and colors. Every phrase felt intelligently considered: Within Gounod’s long lines, she located Juliette’s girlish excitement, trembling self-doubt, and increasingly absolute faith in love.

  • La bohème (Musetta)

    Santa Fe Opera
    Jun 2025 - Aug 2025

    • Emma Marhefka, who was a Santa Fe Opera apprentice last year, shines as the stylish and flirtatious flapper, Musetta. Like the rest of the cast, Marhefka is a very fine comic actor and dancer, as well as a singer… Marhefka does a dance routine that’s both sexually provocative and hilarious.

    • [...] soprano Emma Marhefka in a captivating SFO debut

    • American soprano Emma Marhefka in a vocally and dramatically stylish performance as the fiery Musetta.

    • Musetta, sung by Emma Marhefka, got to have all the fun of the evening. Her courtesan life-style physically embodied the director’s choice of setting, the Jazz Age – she was a flapper nonpareil. Marhefka, as well as D’Eramo, are both former Apprentice singers with Santa Fe Opera, a sign that the casting staff is well aware of how to spot future stars.

    • Pennsylvania Emma Marhefka…shows great promise of future recognition of first rank international opera star… As Musetta, Marhefka demonstrates both the ebullient vocal presence and comic timing essential for a role that dominates the opera’s second scene. [She] delivered Musetta’s second scene anthem…“Quando me’n vo’, with passion. She was a comic delight in her frenzied interactions with… Alcindoro. In contrast, in the opera’s somber final scene, she showed focused dramatic intensity.

    • Emma Marhefka was a scene-stealing Musetta—sassy, full of comic verve, stylish and vocally agile.

    • Emma Marhefka played the coquette to the nth degree. No character was more vivid throughout, justifying the bystanders who are delighted to spy her in the second act crowd scene. The famous Waltz was more languid than usual, but none the less effective with her rich voice.