Northwest Public Radio | This month, the Northwest native Angela Meade will grace the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York in Verdi’s Ernani.The Centralia native is no newcomer to opera, and has maintained a buzz of international excitement from critics and opera fans alike, since the beginning of her career in 2008.

Meade was on the Opera News’ cover in their 13th Diva Issue in November. Chronicling her rise to stardom, Fred Cohn wrote:

“In more than thirty years of attending performances of Norma, I had never encountered a soprano able to negotiate the monumental title role accurately and without technical compromise. That is, until July 10, 2010, at the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, New York, when Angela Meade, then thirty-two, sang the role, beginning to end, just as I had always hoped to hear it — with a plush, large-scale sound; a secure, ringing top; an incisive lower range; and, above all, with a realization of every note of the score, with the treacherous coloratura passages voiced firmly, fully — and thrillingly. Here was that rare creature, a dramatic soprano d’agilità.”

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The Huffington Post | This year fifteen hundred competitors sang their hearts out in front of a table of judges for the chance to be launched into stardom. But they weren’t singing pop ballads to get on television screens — they were singing opera arias for a chance to compete on stage at the Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions have been a tradition since the 1930s and are designed to find budding opera stars in their formative years.

“[Winning the National Council Auditions] was a direct link to starting my career,” famed soprano Angela Meade told The Huffington Post.

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Opera News | In more than thirty years of attending performances of Norma, I had never encountered a soprano able to negotiate the monumental title role accurately and without technical compromise.

That is, until July 10, 2010, at the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, New York, when Angela Meade, then thirty-two, sang the role, beginning to end, just as I had always hoped to hear it – with a plush, large-scale sound; a secure, ringing top; an incisive lower range; and, above all, with a realization of every note of the score, with the treacherous coloratura passages voiced firmly, fully – and thrillingly. Here was that rare creature, a dramatic soprano d’agilita.

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | Meade’s career began at the Met with a win at the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, which the soprano has since followed with successful performances on that legendary stage and elsewhere. Christopher Hahn, then artistic director of Pittsburgh Opera and now its general director, was a judge in the competition that started her career.

“She was a great find as many times one discovers at those Met auditions, but she was just sort of starting out, so obviously I watched [her career] with great interest,” Mr. Hahn said. “It’s great when an initial impulse, the first impression, then over a period of time is vindicated.”

While she has sung on two occasions with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Meade, 37, makes her Pittsburgh Opera debut on Saturday in “Grand and Glorious,” a one-night gala concert at the Benedum Center.

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ItaliaChiamaItalia | Dopo tante interviste ai cantanti lirici italiani che portano con orgoglio il loro talento nel mondo, questa volta sulle pagine di ItaliaChiamaItalia è protagonista un soprano statunitense, Angela Meade, che porta le sue doti vocali nel nostro Paese.

Venuta per la prima volta in Italia, qualche mese fa, ha conquistato il Belpaese ed è prossima a ritornarci per un evento importantissimo con il Teatro Regio di Torino, quale lo Stresa Festival. Nell’incantevole cornice che si affaccia sul Lago Maggiore, il 22 agosto si raggiungerà un prestigioso traguardo: il concerto numero 1000, dove Angela, specializzata nel repertorio operistico italiano di primo Ottocento, sarà la principessa Matilde nel Gugliemo Tell di Rossini.

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OregonLive | Portland Summerfest one of Washington Park’s most popular events for three reasons: A gorgeous location overlooking the city and Mt. Hood, a favorite opera every year and casts as good as at any opera house in the country.

This summer, the great Angela Meade returns to Portland Summerfest to sing the title role in Norma, that Rolls Royce of an opera that purrs down the road on pillowy song. Meade is a favorite soprano of the Metropolitan Opera, perfect for Vincenzo Bellini’s bel canto opera with its luxurious powertrain of sound that pulls the thing along.

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Latinos Post | She watched her lover kill himself in Verdi’s Ernani for her Met debut. She was beheaded for perceived adultery in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena three years later. She then committed suicide as Leonora in Verdi’s Il Trovatore in early 2013. And a few months ago she was ready to kill her children as the title character in Bellini’s Norma. All of this on the Metropolitan Opera no less.

Despite the tragic dimensions of most of her roles, Angela Meade feels extremely comfortable in the world of comic opera.

“It’s just a really fun show. I’ve never done anything like this,” said Meade during a recent conversation with Latinos Post about her performances as Alice Ford in the new Met production of Verdi’s Falstaff. “It’s so different from everything that I do. I play tragic characters where I die all the time. It’s nice to have fun and focus on the comedic side and enjoy working with my colleagues.”

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The New York Times | By journalistic tradition, where-are-they-now stories tell of people whose 15 minutes of fame are up. But the reshowing of The Audition, Susan Froemke’s documentary about a competition for young opera singers, on Sunday at noon on Great Performances at the Met on Channel 13, offers an opportunity for a different kind of update. Ms. Froemke’s 2009 film chronicled the grueling final rounds of the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, in which some 1,800 singers competed for six $15,000 prizes and a chance to catch the ears of the opera world. So where are they now? With the heartbreaking exception of Ryan Smith, a well-liked tenor who won but died of lymphoma before the film’s release, the winning singers are all performing at the Metropolitan Opera and other major opera houses.

The Wall Street Journal | In the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Falstaff, opening Friday, the singer who plays the youthful Nannetta wears pedal pushers, the kitchen in a key scene is filled with midcentury American appliances and the title character’s first appearance is in a hotel room, surrounded by room-service carts.

Welcome to Falstaff set in the pre-Mad Men era, a far cry from the late-1800s opera created by Giuseppe Verdi, much less the Shakespearean plays from which it is based.

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Examiner.com | Though Norma features three male roles, it is chiefly ladies night. The two priestesses, Norma and Adalgisa, sing high-powered duets in both acts—first in friendship, then in rage and anguish, and finally in reconciliation and solidarity—and these were showstoppers. The women’s stage chemistry spurred each other on to greater vocal feats, and they blended divinely.

Soprano Angela Meade, who hails from Centralia, Washington, and now resides in Philadelphia, received thunderous applause following her Act I entrance aria, Casta diva, thought by many to be the most difficult to sing in the soprano literature. In an interview last week, the gifted and immensely talented soprano shared with Examiner.com her insights into the role in general and that aria in particular.

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