Cierra Byrd

Cierra Byrd is a mezzo-soprano from Ohio now in her third year in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. During the 2021–22 season, she made her Met debut as Bertha in the Grammy Award winning cast of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones. This season she sang a Woman of Crete in Idomeneo and Sister Mathilde in Dialogues des Carmélites at the Met and will  make her role and company debut as Fatima in Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels’ new opera, Omar at Boston Lyric Opera. Recent operatic appearances include the Governess in The Queen of Spades at Des Moines Metro Opera and the Witch in Hänsel und Gretel at Opera Saratoga. On the concert stage, she will appear as a featured soloist in Adolphus Hailstork’s A Knee on the Neck with New York Choral Society, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with Bard Orchestra, and as Medoro and Alcina in a concert production of Furiosus, a new opera in two acts in collaboration with New York University’s Casa Italiana under the baton of Robert Tweeten. She was named a winner of the inaugural Duncan Williams Voice Competition, a voice competition for Black and Latinx classical singers presented by New York City Opera and Manhattan School of Music. Notable accolades include Legacy Award from the National Opera Association’s Carolyn Bailey Argento Vocal Competition, being named a finalist in Opera Ebony’s Benjamin Matthews Vocal Competition, second prize in the Peabody Conservatory’s Vocal Studies Song Competition, and the Peabody Artist Excellence Award. She is an alumna of Des Moines Metro Opera’s apprentice artist program and Opera Saratoga’s young artist program. She holds degrees from Ohio State University and the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University, where she studied with legendary mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves.

Cierra Byrd’s participation in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program is sponsored by The Elroy and Terry Krumholz Foundation.