One of the most powerful classical voices to emerge in the 2010s, Angel Blue is also among the opera world’s most dynamic personalities. Born in 1984, the soprano underwent her formative vocal training in Los Angeles, first at the prestigious L.A. County High School for the Arts, then at UCLA, then as part of Los Angeles Opera’s Young Artists Program. In one of her first mainstage performances, she sang Musetta in La Bohème with the LAO in 2007, marking the beginning of a crucial relationship with Puccini’s opera. The singer would go on to make her role debut as Mimì at the English National Opera in 2014, and the part became her entry point to the Metropolitan Opera in 2017. Though Blue has performed with major companies around the world, the Met is where she truly set herself apart as an artist, most prominently as Bess in the 2019–20 smash-hit production of Porgy and Bess. In 2021–2022, Blue also costarred in the Met debut of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the first opera by a Black composer to be produced at the company.
