California native Madeleine Lew is a rising young soprano currently pursuing an Artist Diploma at Boston University’s prestigious Boston Opera Institute where she studies with Penelope Bitzas. At the Opera Institute this season she will portray La Fée in Massenet’s Cendrillon, Servilia in La Clemenza di Tito, and Quinn in Melissa Dunphy’s new opera Alice Tierney.
Last season at the Opera Institute, she portrayed the title role of Beatriz in Daniel Catan’s La Hija de Rappaccini, Amy in Mark Adamo’s Little Women, and Morgana in Handel’s Alcina. In spring 2022, Madeleine received her Masters of Music in Vocal Arts and Opera at the University of Southern California studying with Elizabeth Hynes. She is also a recent graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she completed her Bachelor of Music in 2019 under the tutelage of renowned mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer.
Madeleine is the winner of the 2023 Frank Huntington Beebe Fund grant; a $22,000 grant awarded to young musicians to spend an extended period of time abroad to audition and begin their careers in Europe. With this award, she traveled to Vienna to study the life and music of Josefine Winter, a long forgotten Holocaust-era composer whose publications were largely destroyed by the Nazi regime. Ultimately, she aims to record and distribute Winter’s music, restoring her lost musical legacy.
Madeleine made her European debut at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland in collaboration with USC in March 2022, creating the leading role of the Bear in Uljas Pulkiss’s world premiere of All the Truths We Cannot See. The opera portrays the events that occurred before and after the historic nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Pripyat, Ukraine in 1986. In April, Madeleine performed the work in Los Angeles for its North American premiere.
In November 2021, Madeleine performed the title role of Euridice in USC’s production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. In early 2021, Madeleine participated in a series of online masterclasses as a part of Fort Worth Opera’s Music Speaks: The Language of Poetry and Libretti where she worked with renowned coaches J.J Penna, Lucy Yates, and Rachelle Jonck. In spring of 2021 Madeleine performed the role of Yniold in USC’s spring production of Pelleas et Melisande, and participated in USC’s fall program of digital shorts, where she sang excerpts of Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves. In summer 2021, Madeleine received a fellowship to attend the Sewanee Music Festival, where she was featured as Guilietta in excerpts of I Capuleti e i Montecchi.
In January 2020 Madeleine made her professional debut with Pasadena Opera reprising the role of Littler Daughter in the west coast premiere of Mazzoli’s Proving Up, which she covered in summer 2019 at the Aspen Music Festival. In Aspen, Madeleine also performed in orchestral scenes of Verdi’s Falstaff, and was featured in a solo recital. Madeleine would have performed Adele in Die Fledermaus summer 2020 at the Berlin Opera Academy, however, it was canceled due to COVID-19.
A passionate recitalist, Madeleine spent summers as a fellow at Songfest where she sang in recitals curated and accompanied by Jake Heggie, Graham Johnson, and Margo Garrett. In 2018, Madeleine was invited to curate and perform a recital program to accompany a music history lecture series at the University of San Francisco’s Fromm Institute of music from the Vilna Ghetto that was lost during the Holocaust. The following season, she was asked to return, this time designing a program of bel canto songs and arias. In spring of 2021, Madeleine fused her love of song and community engagement, producing and performing in an online benefit concert of early Broadway love songs and duets with a group of colleagues, which raised over nine thousand dollars for local COVID-19 relief funds, lovingly named Love from a Distance.
Past roles include Dew Fairy in Hansel and Gretel at SFCM in collaboration with San Francisco Opera, Beth in Adamo’s Little Women, and Drusilla in Monteverdi’s l’Incoronazione di Poppea. In fall 2019, she covered the role of Titania in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at USC.
Madeleine is also an award winner of the 2023 Boston District of the Laffont Metropolitan Opera Competition, the 2019 East Bay Opera League Competition, a 2022 quarter finalist of the esteemed Young Concert Artists competition, and a 2023 and 2020 semi-finalist, and 2019 Bell Encouragement Award winner of the James Toland Vocal Arts competition.