Photo by Kendra Irene
Home town: Brooklyn, NY
Nicole Joy Mitchell, contralto, is a proud native of Brooklyn, New York and has performed around the country and the world. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2019 as part of the ensemble in the GRAMMY Award winning production of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. She has performed in several productions since including the historic GRAMMY Award winning opera by Terence Blanchard, Fire Shut Up in My Bones. She has performed at New York City Opera, Piedmont Opera, Tanglewood, Sarasota Opera, Portland Opera (Oregon), Teatro di San Carlo in Naples and Semperoper in Germany. In 2022, Nicole performed the role of iconic Civil Rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer at Santa Fe Opera in the world premiere of This Little Light of Mine, the Story of Fannie Lou Hamer by composer Chandler Carter and librettist Diana Solomon-Glover. As a NYC-based artist she has performed regularly with American Opera Projects (now The American Opera Project) singing and premiering the works of new composers and has workshopped new operas for the NYU Tisch Opera Writing Workshop. Nicole has worked in film, done voiceover work and in 2021 she composed and performed her own setting of Walt Whitman’s Poets to come! as a dedication to her dear friend Greg Trupiano who founded the Walt Whitman Project. She is a graduate of Buffalo State College and Manhattan School of Music, where she received her master's degree. Nicole currently serves on AGMA’s Board of Governors