GRAMMY® Award-winning contralto Meredith Arwady continues to garner acclaim for her powerful voice, remarkable range, and commanding stage presence across a wide-ranging repertoire that includes Wagner, Verdi, Handel, and contemporary opera. A Grand Finals winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, she is also the recipient of a Richard Tucker Career Grant, the George London Foundation’s Kirsten Flagstad Award, and the inaugural Marian Anderson Prize for Emerging Classical Artists.
25/26 highlights include a return to Opera Theatre of Saint Louis for The Pirates of Penzance (Ruth). She has been a staple at The Metropolitan Opera, where she has appeared in Champion (Kathy Hagen), Doctor Atomic (Pasqualita), and La fille du régiment (Marquise de Berkenfeld); at Houston Grand Opera in Peter Grimes (Auntie), Die Walküre (Schwertleite), and the world premiere of André Previn’s A Brief Encounter; at San Francisco Opera in Falstaff (Mistress Quickly), Gianni Schicchi (Zita), and Suor Angelica (Mother Abbess); and at Oper Frankfurt in Un ballo in maschera (Ulrica), The Medium (Madame Flora), and the Ring Cycle (Erda, First Norn). She originated the role of Kathy Hagen in the world premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Champion at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and later reprised it with Washington National Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Atlanta Opera, and Opéra de Montréal.
Last season, Ms. Arwady starred in the world premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Woman with Eyes Closed at Pittsburgh Opera, portraying Mona—a role written specifically for her. The opera, inspired by a real-life art heist, explores the emotional and moral complexities of motherhood and art, and featured multiple alternate endings across its run.
She has also graced the stages of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Canadian Opera Company, English National Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Glimmerglass Festival, and Des Moines Metro Opera, among many others. Notable roles include the Old Lady in Candide, Filipyevna in Eugene Onegin, the Third Lady in The Magic Flute, Madame de Croissy in Dialogues des Carmélites, Mother Goose in The Rake’s Progress, Mona in Woman With Eyes Closed, Gertrude in Roméo et Juliette, the Hostess in Boris Godunov, Death in The Nightingale and Other Fables, Hannah in Emmeline, and Cornelia in Giulio Cesare.
Ms. Arwady collaborates regularly with esteemed conductors such as James Gaffigan, Alan Gilbert, Robert Spano, Sir Andrew Davis, Fabio Luisi, Sebastian Weigle, Edo de Waart, Christoph Eschenbach, and Lorin Maazel. She has appeared with leading orchestras including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Houston Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic. Her major concert repertoire includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, and 8, Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, Handel’s Messiah (Beecham orchestration), and Dvořák’s Biblical Songs.
In recital, Ms. Arwady has performed under the auspices of the Marilyn Horne Foundation in New York and Chicago, and in concerts sponsored by the Curtis Institute of Music. She was featured in the Richard Tucker Gala and is a graduate of the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago. A native of Michigan, she holds a Master of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Marlena Kleinman Malas.
2025-2026
