“The young soprano Emily Blair, a first-year member of the Benenson Young Artist Program at Palm Beach Opera, substituted {...] as Rosalinde. If being thrust suddenly into a leading role made her nervous, it didn’t show.
Her sweet, rich voice danced through the arias and ensemble numbers with her husband Eisenstein, swiftly traversing pathos, sarcasm and irritation. And she gave a lively, personality-filled Czardas in the central party scene, singing with affecting nostalgia about her fake Hungarian homeland.
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Praised for her “sweet, rich voice” (South Florida Classical Review) and “coloratura flourishes” (Palm Beach Arts Paper), soprano Emily Blair joins Sarasota Opera as a Studio Artist to cover Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni for their 2023 Season. In 2022, she was seen as Older Leah in the New York Premiere of Lori Laitman’s new opera Uncovered with City Lyric Opera and joined Central City Opera as a Bonfils-Stantton Foundation Apprentice Artist for their 2022 summer festival to cover Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus. In the summer of 2021, Ms. Blair participated the prestigious Merola Opera Program, where she was originally scheduled to sing Lady with a Hat Box in Postcard from Morocco as part of the 2020 summer season. She made her professional film debut in Merola’s 2021 production, Back Home: Through the Stage Door, in which she performed scenes from Le nozze di Figaro and Idomeneo.
Ms. Blair spent two seasons as a Benenson Young Artist at Palm Beach Opera, where role debuts included Sandman (Hansel and Gretel), Annina (La traviata), and, most notably, Rosalinda (Die Fledermaus), a role which she was originally covering but sang the full run for after stepping in at the last minute. While at Palm Beach Opera, she also covered Liù (Turandot), Tatiana (Eugene Onegin), and Donna Anna (Don Giovanni). Other roles in Ms. Blair’s repertoire include Countess (Le nozze di Figaro), Pat Nixon (Nixon In China), Juliette (Roméo et Juliette), Angelica (Orlando), The Mother (Hansel and Gretel), Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare), and both Mrs. Grose and Miss Jessel in The Turn of the Screw. She has performed with City Lyric Opera, Ping and Woof Opera, Portland Opera, Opera Upper West, and in young artist programs with Music Academy International and the CoOPERAtive Program.
Internationally, Ms. Blair has performed with Opera on the Avalon and the Trentino Music Festival. She has been recognized in competitions in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Illinois, and New York, including receiving an Encouragement award from the Metropolitan National Council Auditions (now the Laffont Competition) New York District. In 2022, she won both the Igor Gorin Memorial Award and the Iris Henwood Richards Memorial Award.
Ms. Blair is a graduate of Mannes School of Music | The New School for Music and Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. When not on stage, she can be found cuddling with her cats, making pottery, or browsing bookshops to add to her "to be read" pile.