Katherine Henly
Praised worldwide for her captivating and affecting portrayals in genres ranging from opera to musical theater, jazz, and pop, American soprano Katherine Henly has performed with Los Angeles Opera, Washington National Opera, the Royal Opera House Muscat, Hawaii Opera Theatre, Charlottesville Opera, Virginia Opera, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, the New York International Fringe Festival, and the O’Neill National Music Theater Conference. For her eleventh-hour début with Oper Köln in Street Scene, Resmusica raved “Finally, in Sam Kaplan and Rose Maurrant, we discover two of the most promising American singers… Radiant physically and vocally, also very moving in the farewell scene… a performance even more impressive under the circumstances. The young American soprano, passing through Cologne, had replaced at the last minute a sick colleague during several rehearsals – without having yet sung the role on stage before. The Cologne Opera thanked her with a performance that marked both her European début and role début. Definitely a career worth following.”
The 2024-2025 season features Ms. Henly’s début at The Metropolitan Opera as one of the Niñas in their new production of Golijov/Hwang’s Ainadamar. She will also return to South Florida Symphony as soprano soloist in Mozart’s Requiem, appear as a featured soloist in The Twisted World of Christian De Gré Cárdenas at 54 Below, and return to Charlottesville Opera as featured soloist in a Valentine’s Day concert with tenor Jack Swanson.
In the 2023-2024 season, Ms. Henly brought her extraordinary dramatic prowess to the fore in creating the lead role of the Woman in Daniel Schlosberg’s world premiere adaptation of Amanda Quaid’s The Extinctionist with New York’s innovative Heartbeat Opera. Eric Myers for OPERA by Opera News raved, “The Woman is the central character and is on stage non-stop. Katherine Henly gave a tour-de-force performance in the role, stretching her essentially lyric soprano to thrillingly dramatic extremes, and making very pointed use of her impressive upper register.” She also joined the South Florida Symphony for Handel’s Messiah, MidAmerica Productions for her Carnegie Hall début as in Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, and Minnesota Opera to cover Adina in L’elisir d’amore. In the preceding season, she performed the role of Clorinda in Opera Maine’s production of La Cenerentola to great acclaim and was seen in concert with Grand Junction Symphony Orchestra and the Creede Musical Arts Collective.
Recent seasons saw her début the role of Musetta in Peter Rothstein’s critically acclaimed production of La bohème with Theater Latté Da in Minneapolis, her return to Charlottesville Opera as Valencienne in The Merry Widow, her début as Clorinda in Rossini’s La Cenerentola conducted by Gavriel Heine for the Northern Lights Music Festival, and her performance as a soloist in Preludes: Lyrics & Lyricists, a five-part online series filmed on the historic stage of the 92nd Street Y. Additional recent performances include the world premiere of Maria Thompson Corley’s The Sky Where You Are commissioned by An Opera Theatre and streaming online as a part of Decameron Opera Coalition’s Tales From A Safe Distance; and a soloist for Glad Jul, a holiday concert produced by Motarbeider, the Støttet av Kulturrådet Norsk kulturfond, and the Nord-Odal kommune, filmed in the historic Sand kirke in Nord-Odal, Norway. She made her off-Broadway début as Elsa in Sheldon Harnick’s musical Dragons at The York Theatre Company and can be heard on the studio recording with Tony Award-winner Michael Cerveris. Ms. Henly has had solo performances with Utah Lyric Opera, Utah Valley Symphony Orchestra, Grand Junction Symphony Orchestra, the Ramsey Wind Symphony, Palisades Virtuosi, Worcester Symphony Orchestra, Camerata New York, and in concert at Mechanics Hall and Carnegie Hall.
Ms. Henly has completed Young Artist residencies with Utah Festival Opera, Charlottesville Opera, and the Glimmerglass Festival. She is a graduate of Ithaca College (B.M.) and Brigham Young University (M.M.).
