The award, which comes with $50,000 and the opportunity to headline a starry celebratory gala at Carnegie Hall in New York City on Oct. 27, is among the most sought-after prizes for young American opera singers. Many of its past recipients have gone on to stardom.
Oropesa, 35, is one of the few opera singers who have been featured in both Opera News and Runner’s World, which reported on her 2015 feat of running the Pittsburgh Marathon the morning after starring in a production of Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment.” The article noted that “her standing-ovation-to-marathon-time was just over 13 hours.”
She has had recent successes in both famous bel canto roles and Meyerbeer rarities. When she sang the role of Marguerite de Valois in Meyerbeer’s “Les Huguenots” at the Opéra National de Paris last fall, Zachary Woolfe wrote in The New York Times that Oropesa “sounded lucid and silky, radiating good intentions.”
Born in New Orleans to parents from Cuba, Oropesa played the flute as a child and studied vocal performance at Louisiana State University. She trained in the Metropolitan Opera’s young artists program and sang her first big role there, Susanna in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” when she was just 22. She has appeared at the Met more than 100 times and will return next season to star in Massenet’s “Manon” and Verdi’s “La Traviata.”
Previous winners of the Tucker Award include Renée Fleming, Lawrence Brownlee, Christine Goerke, Joyce DiDonato, Michael Fabiano and Jamie Barton.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.