Emily Gallagher, described as “harmonically appealing and splendiferous,” is a soprano based in Los Angeles, California. She was most recently seen in the title role of Michael Ching’s Alice Ryley with Source/Filter Music Collective, performing an original program of lost music by female composers, Women Have Loved Before, with pianist Donna Suenyan Chan in Vienna, Austria, and the original recital program Goodnight Moon with pianist Andrew Pham in Eugene, Oregon. Her 2024-2025 season included Chloé in Offenbach’s Daphnis et Chloé and Chester in Jodi Goble & Basil Considine’s Meow and Forever with Thousand Bridges Opera, Susanna in Il segreto di Susanna and Lucy in The Telephone with Opera Italia, Dew Fairy/Sandman in Opera Modesto’s production of Hansel and Gretel, and Opal Burrows in The Mighty Casey with Lyric Opera of Orange County.

Upcoming engagements Maguelonne in Opera Modesto’s production of Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon and Goodnight Moon at the Great Valley Museum and Planetarium with pianist Andrew Pham accompanied by an original planetarium show designed to accompany the recital.

Emily is the creator and star of the one woman opera, Enchanted Melodies: An Interactive Fairytale Opera which she premiered in June of 2024 with City Lyric Opera in New York City. She has gone on to perform the opera with Pacific Opera Project, Opera Modesto, the Stanislaus County Library System, Azure Family Concerts (Pittsburgh), The Stissing Center (New York), Creative Becoming (Philadelphia), the Ronald McDonald House of Greater Philadelphia, and Santa Cruz Opera Project, with upcoming performances with Lyric Opera of Orange County. 

Role highlights include John F. Kennedy in the world premiere of Minute to Midnight with Synchromy (Los Angeles), First Wood Sprite in Pacific Opera Project’s Rusalka, Gretel in Hansel and Gretel with Pacific Opera Project, Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance with the Pittsburgh Savoyards, Soprano in Missy Mazzoli’s Songs from the Uproar at the August Wilson Center (Pittsburgh), Maguelone/La Fée in Cendrillon with Pittsburgh Festival Opera, Nada in Ana Sokolović’s Svadba at the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade and Suor Genovieffa in Suor Angelica at the KammerOper in Vienna. While a student at Carnegie Mellon University she sang the roles of Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro and Carolina in Il matrimonio segreto. 

As a recitalist, Emily has been seen as a soloist in Marshall Opera’s Opera Oral History Project at Lincoln Center and abroad in Vienna, Austria; Valletta, Malta; and Belgrade, Serbia. 

Emily is an avid supporter of contemporary music, and has originated multiple roles, including John F. Kennedy in Dante De Silvia and Alan Olejniczak’s Minute to Midnight with Synchromy (Los Angeles), Mary in The School of Marital Happiness at the Wiener KammerOper, Mother in Starsong, part of the Compōs-it Opera Festival, Diana in Languagemachine with Pittsburgh Opera, part of their Co-Opera series, and Soprano in Caleb Glickman’s My Neighbor Figaro, for which she also wrote the libretto. This opera was also presented on OperaVision in August 2020 as part of a series of mini-operas written, produced, and performed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a 2022-23 Fulbright Scholar to Austria Emily worked with the theater production company TaleSpin—Musical Tales for Big and Small to produce an original children’s concert series and picture book available in four languages. Emily holds a BFA in Vocal Performance from Carnegie Mellon University.