Emma Marhefka is a soprano from Pennsylvania and 2025 Grand Finals Winner of the Met’s Laffont Competition, now in her first year in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, during which, she will make her Met debut as Papagena in Julie Taymor’s beloved holiday production of The Magic Flute. Last season, she appeared as Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel at Opera Montana, Musetta in La Bohème at the Santa Fe Opera, and in several roles at Arizona Opera including Musetta, the Priestess in Aida, and Sandrina in Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera. Additional engagements include Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi at Opera Tampa, Younger Alyce in Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied at both Knoxville Opera and Opera Roanoke, Frasquita in Carmen at Des Moines Metro Opera, and covering Adina in L’Elisir D’Amore at the Santa Fe Opera. 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 2018 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.