About this Artist

Maria Elena Altany is a third generation Xicana soprano from San Francisco, currently based in Los Angeles. She is known for her acrobatic high notes and daring performances on the cutting edge of opera and classical music. Her roles with LA Opera include Susanna in ¡Figaro!(90210) and Sacrifice in the premiere of Las Tres Mujeres de Jerusalén conducted by James Conlon. She recently starred in Mark Grey’s Birds in The Moon, in which Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times declared that she “soars in song.” She premiered the role at the New York Philharmonic’s Bandwagon 2 Festival, and then at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica. She is a Company Member of the groundbreaking opera company The Industry, led by MacArthur Fellow Yuval Sharon. With The Industry, she has performed featured roles in Anne LeBaron’s Crescent City, Chris Cerrone’s Invisible Cities, an adaptation of Brecht’s Galileo, and Hopscotch: An Opera for 24 Cars, for which she was featured in The New Yorker. Recent appearances include the John Cage’s Europeras 1 & 2 with the LA Philharmonic and The Industry, the workshop of Esperanza Spalding and Wayne Shorter’s opera ...(Iphigenia), and Susanna in Ragnar Kjartansson’s BLISS with wild Up!, as part of the LA Philharmonic’s Fluxus festival. Maria Elena appears in The Industry’s Sweet Land, which is available for streaming purchase, and in LA Opera’s video production of Mozart’s Opera Tales. She maintains a private voice studio in Long Beach focused on joyous and healing exploration through singing.