About

“The afternoon belonged to Melissa Wimbish ... beautifully prepared, vocally stunning, and theatrically riveting, [she] effortlessly held the audience in her hand throughout this one-woman show.” The Washington Post

Coloratura soprano Melissa Wimbish has built a daring career spanning opera, oratorio, chamber music, art song, ensemble singing, pop, film, and theatre. The recipient of the NATS Artist Award Grand Prize, Wimbish has been celebrated for her invigorating stage presence and her “diamond-toned” soprano. (Musical America)

Recent performances include her Metropolitan Opera House debut in Woolf Works with music by Max Richter for American Ballet Theater. Wimbish made her Kennedy Center debut as a soloist in the 50th anniversary performance of Bernstein’s MASS with National Symphony. At National Sawdust, she performed Britten’s Les Illuminations for ChamberQueer Festival. The 2024-25 season will conclude with her portrayal of Virginia in the world-premiere of The Delta King’s Blues, a new opera based on Robert Johnson’s deal with the devil, composed by Damien Geter with text by Jarrod Lee.

A rising figure in contemporary vocal performance, Wimbish has interpreted many challenging works of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Got Lost by Helmut Lachenmann, Vier Elementarphantasien by Thierry Tidrow, György Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre with the Baltimore Symphony, and the U.S. premiere of Hilda Paredes’s chamber opera HARRIET alongside legendary soprano Claron McFadden. Her upcoming residency at Yellow Barn Music Festival in 2026 will feature performances of György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments and Fragments from the Scrapbooks of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg.

As a singing actress with a knack for comedic timing, Wimbish has performed traditional operatic roles and contemporary premieres. She created the role of Josephine Baker in the world-premiere of Tom Cipullo’s Josephine. Recent stage roles include Poulenc’s La voix humaine at New England Conservatory and Stella-Rondo in the world-premiere of Why I Live at the P.O. at the Keegan Theatre. Wimbish appears as the opera singer in the short film Music For A While, which won Best Narrative Short at the 2024 ⁠⁠DC Independent Film Forum.

Career milestones reflect Wimbish’s versatility and an agile voice shaped by artistic curiosity. In the world-premiere of Paul’s Case by Gregory Spears and Kathryn Walat, Wimbish created the role of the History Teacher and later recorded the role with American Modern Ensemble for National Sawdust Tracks. At Carnegie Hall, Wimbish gave the world-premiere of Jessica Meyer’s song cycle Space in Chains with the composer on viola; the studio recording, featured on the album I long and seek after, was praised in Musical America. Her songwriting and singing can be heard on nearly a dozen albums including three studio albums she wrote with her band, Outcalls.