Emily Gallagher, described as “harmonically appealing and splendiferous,” is a soprano based in Los Angeles, California. On the operatic stage she was most recently seen as the stepsister Maguelonne in Opera Modesto’s production of Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon and in the title role of Michael Ching’s Alice Ryley with Source/Filter Music Collective. An avid recitalist, this season she premiered Ivan’s Plazačić’s Serbian-language song cycle Exodus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; performed a program of lost music by female composers in the solo recital Women Have Loved Before, with pianist Donna Suenyan Chan in Vienna, Austria; and performed a solo recital of moon themed repertoire with pianist Andrew Pham in both Eugene, Oregon and Modesto, California. This program, Goodnight Moon, is performed with an accompanying full-dome planetarium show designed for the concert.

Upcoming engagements this spring and summer include Fanny in La cambiale di matrimonio as a guest artist with Santa Monica College Opera Theatre; Micaëla in Carmen with Valley Opera and Performing Arts; a soloist with Opera Santa Barbara for their Pop-Up Opera spring/summer series; a soloist for the N.E.O voice festival where she will premiere a Finnish-language piece for soprano, choir, and organ; and a soloist for an operatic wine pairing concert, Opera Uncorked, at the Stissing Center in New York. In 2027, Emily will sing Rose/Water/Fox in The Little Prince with Opera Modesto and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte with Opera Italia.

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, Lyric Opera of Orange County, Santa Cruz Opera Project, and the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum, with upcoming performances with Valley Opera and Performing Arts and San Francisco Opera, through the company’s community engagement and outreach programs.

Role highlights include 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, Opal Burrows in The Mighty Casey with Lyric Opera of Orange County, 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. 

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.