Emma Marhefka

Soprano | Allentown, Pennsylvania | Age 27 | Second Year 

Emma Marhefka is a soprano from Pennsylvania and 2025 Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition, now in her second year in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. She will return to the Met for the 2026–27 season where she will appear as Pamina in The Magic Flute and Madeleine Audebert in Silent Night before making her company debut as Musetta in La Bohème with Seattle Opera. Last season, she made her Met debut as Papagena in The Magic Flute then made her highly anticipated role and company debut as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Additional engagements include Musetta at the Santa Fe Opera, Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel at Opera Montana, Sandrina in Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera at Arizona Opera, Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi at Opera Tampa, Younger Alyce in Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied at Knoxville Opera and Opera Roanoke, Frasquita in Carmen at Des Moines Metro Opera, and Adina (cover) in L’Elisir d’Amore at the Santa Fe Opera. On the concert stage, she has appeared as the soprano soloist in Vivaldi’s Gloria with The New Choral Society and Arthur Honegger’s King David with The New York Choral Society at Alice Tully Hall. During her studies at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, she appeared as Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Mary Johnson in Gregory Spears’s Fellow Travelers, the title role of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, and Valeria in the world premiere of Cipullo’s Mayo at the Crane School of Music. In addition to her success in the Laffont Competition, she was a two-time winner of the Corbett Opera Scholarship Competition and a 2023 finalist in Houston Grand Opera’s Eleanor McCollum Competition. She is an alumna of Arizona Opera’s Marion Roose Pullin Studio Artist Program, the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Artist Program, the Wolf Trap Opera Studio, the Des Moines Metro Opera Apprentice Artist Program, and the Janiec Opera Company of the Brevard Music Center. She holds degrees in voice from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam. 

Emma Marhefka’s participation in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program is sponsored by the Kern family, in memory of Ralph W. Kern.