Voice: | Soprano |
Nationality: | American |
Year of Birth: | 1983 |
Lisette Oropesa (born September 29, 1983) is an American operatic soprano. She has a wide repertoire that includes works from Gluck, Handel, Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Wagner, Verdi, Bizet, Massenet and Puccini. With her lyric coloratura soprano voice, she has performed roles in her native Spanish and English, as well as German, French and Italian. She is particularly noted in the roles of Susanna, Gilda, Konstanze and Lucia.
Oropesa is a vegan, and avid runner/marathoner who has been featured in Runner's World Magazine. In 2014, she co-contributed to Running, Eating, Thinking: A Vegan Anthology by Martin Rowe, where she talked about her weight loss journey and how she now follows a plant-based diet.
In 2015, she was a contributor to Master Singers: Advice from the Stage which includes interviews from famous opera singers about "analysis and awareness of their technique, art, interpretation and stagecraft".
Oropesa was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her parents emigrated from Cuba.
She originally studied to be a flautist before her mother, a music teacher and former operatic soprano, suggested she audition for the voice faculty at the LSU School of Music at Louisiana State University. Her audition went so well that she joined the voice program with Robert Grayson as her mentor.
Oropesa was a grand finals winner of the National Council Grand Finals at the Metropolitan Opera in 2005 and joined the Met's Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, from which she graduated in 2008. She made her Met debut in a small role in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's production of Idomeneo, conducted by James Levine in September 2006, and then sang First Lay-Sister in their new production of Suor Angelica.