To celebrate and spotlight some of the field’s top emerging singers, OPERA America asked company leaders to nominate the artists who have caught their ears and eyes.

Soprano Emily Richter has upcoming debuts in Hamburg, Geneva, and Paris, in addition to the United States, but she’s no stranger to the jet-setting lifestyle. “I was a foreign service kid and grew up mostly overseas, which wound up being perfect preparation for the opera lifestyle,” says Richter, who studied both French and German in Geneva and even learned some passable Japanese as a child.

Born in Arlington, Virginia, Richter began studying voice in London, attending her teacher’s operatic productions in black box theaters and churches in Soho. Her first operatic role was the Countess in a college production of The Marriage of Figaro at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and she later earned a master’s degree from McGill University in Montreal.

Residency programs soon followed, first at Pittsburgh Opera and then Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center, where she sang roles including Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, First Frida Image in El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, and Glauce in Medea.

In addition to securing stints at top summer festival companies, Richter was also a 2024 Grand Finals winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition. She is currently auditioning for roles around the world and will next sing the monodrama Émilie (Kaija Saariaho, composer; Amin Maalouf, librettist) with Catapult Opera in New York City in May before heading to the International Meistersinger Academy in Germany for the summer.

“It is clear to me, and many other colleagues, that she is a generational kind of talent,” says Matthew Hrdlicka, artistic coordinator at Pittsburgh Opera.

In the Wings is underwritten by generous support from Laurie E. Nelson Randlett, trustee of the Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera.