RECENT NEWS

Upcoming Recital

Quagliata will perform with collaborative pianist Valerie M. Trujillo at Florida State University on January 12, 2025, in a program of French and Spanish song, featuring works by Viardot, Poulenc, Debussy, Cantaloube, and de Falla.

The reviews are in for this summer’s Carmen with Union Avenue Opera!

Read them all on the reviews page!

“The role of Carmen is sung by Elise Quagliata.  She triumphs in it!  A generously passionate actress, she captures this voracious seductress, this siren, this femme fatale.”

“She’s also a dancer through and through.  Her carriage, the fluent flourishes of her hands and arms in those gypsy dances, the romance told by her beautiful bare shoulders.  And those castanets!  Each click is a little exclamation point.  As if singing weren’t enough Ms. Quagliata is also choreographer for the show.”

“The overpowering sensuality of Union Avenue’s Carmen is due not only to Elise Quagliata’s striking use her beautiful, dusky voice, but also to the supreme self-confidence of her bearing and mien.”

2021 Grammy nomination!

Luna Pearl Woolf’s album Fire and Flood, which was nominated for a 2021 Grammy for Best Classical Compendium, featured Elise alongside cellist Matt Haimowitz, Devon Guthrie and Nancy Anderson!

Get your copy at Amazon, and watch the teaser video on YouTube.

A new American opera world premiere in July 2022

Join Elise for her 9th production with Des Moines Metro Opera on July 9, 2022 as they celebrate their 50th Anniversary with a new American work: the world premiere of A Thousand Acres, featuring Elise Quagliata as Ginny, with music by Kristin Kuster and libretto by Mark Campbell.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres is a modern retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear set on a farm in Iowa in the late 1970s told from the point of view of Ginny, the oldest of three daughters.

A Thousand Acres is family drama writ large. It is a story with great scope and broad appeal with distinctive female characters that explores ideas of family conflict, patriarchy, legacy and the strength and fragility of the ties that bind us together, all told through the eyes of its central female protagonist.

Becoming Sister Helen for a 6th production

Elise is excited to make her debut with Opera Idaho this April Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking co-starring with Tim Mix as Joseph De Rocher and Sara Jobin on the podium.

Check out Elise’s interview with fellow mezzo, Katharine Goeldner, in AGMA’s magazine:

Here’s an excerpt:

Let’s start with the basics: We are almost one year into the pandemic, which shuttered your industry overnight. How are you doing with all of this? Well, after almost a year, I think we’ve settled into a bit of a new normal. It was extremely hard and jarring at first, losing our jobs, locking down, not traveling, not making art, not seeing family. We’re in a groove now that is somewhat tolerable, certainly not where we want to be much longer, but we’re making it work.

Take us back to March. What were you doing before the pandemic took hold? Where were you when you heard the news of the closures? I was in the middle of rehearsals with Minnesota Opera. We were rehearsing Paola Prestini and Mark Campbell’s beautiful new work, Edward Tulane, set to premiere mid-March. By March 1st, we knew Covid was coming closer to Minnesota, but we were still full steam ahead, just with more hand sanitizer and being more mindful of our generous hugs. Sadly, on Friday, March 13th, the administration called us in for a meeting and told us we would be going home. It was devastating and scary. We were sad to abandon this beautiful work, but knew getting back home safely to our families was the priority. Minnesota Opera handled the entire thing with goodwill and aplomb. They got us all back home the following day and paid us our fees. Because as this all started to sink in, I began to panic about losing this money. Future contracts were being canceled one after the next, theaters closing; losing an entire fee was unfathomable. But Minnesota Opera came through and took care of their artists, and that was no small feat.

UPCOMING