American soprano Angela Meade is the winner of both the Metropolitan Opera’s 2012 Beverly Sills Artist Award and the 2011 Richard Tucker Award. In 2008, she joined an elite group of history’s singers when, as Elvira in Verdi’s Ernani, she made her professional operatic debut on the Met stage. Since then, she has fast become recognized as one of today’s outstanding vocalists, excelling in the most demanding heroines of the 19th-century bel canto repertoire as well as in the operas of Verdi and Mozart.
In the 2024–25 season, Angela Meade makes notable returns to Teatro La Fenice, the Metropolitan Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper and Teatro Carlo Felice in celebrated role portrayals. She returns to the Metropolitan Opera as Leonora in Il trovatore in David McVicar’s critically acclaimed production, conducted by Daniele Callegari. She sings the title role in Lucrezia Borgia in Munich and makes her role debut as the title role in Die Liebe der Danae at Teatro Carlo Felice with Fabio Luisi. Concert appearances include Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Nashville Symphony and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare.
On the concert stage, Meade has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestre Métropolitain (Montréal), Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, San Antonio Symphony and Seattle Symphony, among others.
A native of Washington State and an alumna of the Academy of Vocal Arts, Meade has triumphed in an astounding number of vocal competitions: 57 in all, including many of the opera world’s most important prizes. In addition to being a winner at the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, as documented in The Audition, a film subsequently released on DVD by Decca, she was also the first singer to take first prize in both the opera and operetta categories of the prestigious Belvedere Competition.