Melanie was a 2019 Emerging Artist with Opera in the Ozarks, singing in Little Women (Amy), The Abduction from the Seraglio (Blonde), covering Musetta in La Boheme, and touring Northwest Arkansas as a Pre-Season Outreach Artist. She was a featured performer with the 2019 OME New Music Festival, performing music by Guest Composer-in-Residence Sarah Gibson and premiering composer Ashlee Busch’s song cycle Atypical Chronicles. As a 2018-2019 Molly Blank Fund ASU-Gammage Teaching Artist, Melanie developed her own artist residency based on the Kennedy Center’s Arts Integration Method, and led Teaching Artist residencies at Red Mountain High School (Mesa, AZ), and with the Scottsdale Arts Cultural Connections Program (Scottsdale, AZ). Additional engagements include joining Arizona Opera as a 2018 Education Artist, singing in Hansel and Gretel (Gretel), Opera 101: The Audition (Soprano Soloist), and in the lecture recital Candide’s Musical Mayhem (Featured Soloist).

Melanie has sung in multiple workshops and readings of new operas and musicals, Silvia in Behold the Man (Paul Fowler/Andrew Flack) with Arizona State University, Lynn in The Halloween Tree (Theo Popov/Tony Asaro) in collaboration with Arizona State University and American Lyric Theater, Lillie in Babe (Andrea Jill Higgins/Carolyn Gage) at Arizona State University and the National Women’s Music Festival, and La Babette in Big Red Sun (Georgia Stitt/Jon Jiler) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Melanie’s accolades include being an Arizona State Lyric Opera Theatre Guild Grant Recipient, an Encouragement Award Winner at the Metropolitan Opera District Auditions, and a Semi-Finalist in the Phoenix Opera Southwest Vocal Competition. She is also an alum of the DBR Lab, an interdisciplinary artist lab curated by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Jeff McMahon, and Arizona State University. She holds degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (BM/Voice with a Dance Minor) and Arizona State University (DMA/Voice & MM/Opera Performance), where her graduate research focused on using Gaga Movement Language and Bartenieff Fundamentals to help singers develop deeper kinesthetic connections to their vocal technique. She currently lives in Brooklyn, and studies with Riley McKinch and Stephanie Weiss.