Soprano Symone Harcum comes off the 2022-2023 season with a successful string of role and house debuts including the Glimmerglass Festival in the role of Micaëla in Bizet’s Carmen, Almirena in Handel’s Rinaldo and Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Minnesota Opera, and at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, she sang the role of Sandra in the world premiere of Will Liverman’s Factotum. Last season, Symone appeared with Minnesota Opera as Léontine in The Anonymous Lover and Micaëla in Carmen, Virginia Opera as La Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro. This season will see a role debut as Mimí in Puccini’s La Boheme at Minnesota Opera as well as recital and concert engagements across the country.
Other notable roles and achievements include first place in the 2021 Opera Ithaca Competition, a 2020 finalist in in both the Tri-Cities Opera Competition and the New York International Opera + Premiere Opera Vocal Competition and first place in both the National Society of Arts and Letters-DC Dorothy Lincoln-Smith Voice Competition and the Sylvia Green Voice Competition in 2018; Singing the role of Mascha and covering Lisa in Pique Dame (Des Moines Metro Opera), Clorinda in La Cenerentola, High Priestess and covering the title role in Aïda (Virginia Opera), Bea in Three Decembers (Opera Maine), Krystyna Zywulska in Out of Darkness: Two Remain, and Gertude in Hansel und Gretel (Peabody Opera).
After receiving her Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from Norfolk State University in 2012, she worked as a choral director in Norfolk Public Schools until 2016. Symone received her Master’s of Music from Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University and continues to study in the studio of Denyce Graves and Margaret Baroody.