Symone Harcum
Soprano, Symone Harcum begins her 2022–2023 season as a Company Artist at Minnesota Opera. There she will make two role debuts as Armirena in Handel’s Rinaldo and Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. She will also make her debut with the Lyric Opera of Chicago singing the role of Sandra in the world premiere of Will Liverman’s Factotum. Last season, Symone appeared with Minnesota Opera as Léontine in The Anonymous Lover and Micaëla in Bizet’s Carmen, Virginia Opera as La Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro, and made her debut with the Glimmerglass Festival in the role of Micaëla in Carmen.
In the summer of 2021 she rejoined the Des Moines Metro Opera as an apprentice artist where she sang the role of Mascha and covered Lisa in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades. During the 2020 season she participated in Virginia Opera’s alternate season initiative, “Stayin’ Alive” where she participated in socially distanced performances in the community and sang Girl in Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti. The cancelled 2021 season would have seen her Minnesota Opera debut in the role of Girlfriend 2 in the award winning opera, Blue.
As a member of 2019–2020 The Herndon Foundation Emerging Artist Program at Virginia Opera, she sang the role of Clorinda in La Cenerentola and covered the title role and sang The High Priestess in Aïda. In the fall of 2020, she was a finalist in both the Tri-Cities Opera Competition and the New York International Opera + Premiere Opera Vocal Competition. Most recently, Symone was named the first place winner of the 2021 Opera Ithaca Competition.
Other notable roles and achievements include being 2018’s first place winner of both the National Society of Arts and Letters-DC Dorothy Lincoln-Smith Voice Competition and the Sylvia Green Voice Competition; The roles of Bea in Opera Maine’s production of Three Decembers, Krystyna Zywulska in Peabody Opera’s workshop of Out of Darkness: Two Remain with the composer, Jake Heggie, and librettist, Gene Scheer, Gertrude (the mother) in Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel and La Ciesca in Gianni Schicchi.
After receiving her Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from Norfolk State University in 2012, she worked as a choral director in Norfolk Public Schools until 2016. Symone received her Master’s of Music from Peabody Conservatory at John’s Hopkins University and continues to study in the studio of Denyce Graves and Margaret Baroody.
