Francesca Lionetta, Soprano
About
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Soprano Francesca Lionetta is passionate about her work onstage as a performing artist and offstage as an arts administrator and educator. Her performance highlights include operatic, oratorio, and concert work as she strives to create a varied career that captures her love for singing in different styles from Baroque to contemporary to cabaret and musical theater. In 2025, Francesca is thrilled to join the Tyler Young Artist Program at Opera on the James in Lynchburg, Virginia. With the company she will perform the roles of Gretel in a touring production of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, Lucy in Menotti's The Telephone, and Marcia in Alec Wilder's The Opening. She will also appear in several concerts. In 2024, Francesca became a full time member of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church Chamber Choir in Manhattan. In addition to Sunday services, she performs in their concerts and was featured as a soloist in their 2024 performances of Handel's Messiah. Other 2024 highlights include the role of Phyllis in Iolanthe with Bronx Opera and Giulietta (study cover) with Teatro Nuovo where Francesca was a studio artist.
All upcoming and recent engagements can be found here.
2023 highlights include the professional program at SongFest, the Art of Song Fellowship at Toronto Summer Music Festival, and at Source Song Festival with collaborative pianist Michele Wong, recital collaborations with Kayo Iwama in Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben, with Bat-Erdene Batbileg and Teryn Kuzma in a recital exploring The Language of Flowers (2023); and Kurtág’s Messages of the Late MissR.V. Troussova (Part 1) as part of Bard’s 2023 Kurtág Festival. Previously, Francesca performed the roles of Grasshopper and Innkeeper in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen at Bard, and Amore in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice at Eastman. Scene work includes Ännchen in Der Freischütz, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, and Mireille in Mireille at Bard. Her concert highlights include Handel’s Messiah (excerpts) with The Orchestra Now, and Bach’s “Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir” in Eastman’s Bach Cantata Series.
In Summer 2019, she worked as a Youth Education Intern at Sarasota Youth Opera. In the 2019-2020 academic year, she interned with Eastman Opera Theatre, where she designed and executed a program that brought opera singers into elementary schools in the city of Rochester, New York. This program was a few weeks away from completion when the COVID-19 pandemic began. In June 2020, she founded What is Opera, Anyway? a non-profit opera education program with a mission to continue the work she began before the pandemic, and she currently works as director of the organization.
Francesca's off-stage experience includes roles in arts administration and opera education. She has worked as co- and assistant-director of youth opera productions with the Treble Chorus of New England, as assistant stage manager for productions with Eastman Opera Theatre, and for two summers she worked in public relations for the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. Francesca was fortunate to grow up singing with The Treble Chorus of New England, a group which fostered her love of classical singing. Providing similar educational opportunities to others has become a cornerstone of her musical career.
Francesca is a graduate of Eastman School of Music where she holds a BM in Voice Performance and a certificate from Eastman's Arts Leadership Program through the Institute for Music Leadership and of Bard College-Conservatory’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program where she completed her MM in Voice. She currently lives in New York, NY and studies with Lorraine Nubar. A teacher herself, Francesca also maintains a studio of singers from age 8 to adult and teaches at Brooklyn Music Factory.