Praised by Opera News for her “impassioned singing”, Polish-American coloratura soprano Alexandra Nowakowski returns to the roster of The Metropolitan Opera for the 2022-23 season to cover Voce dal Cielo in Don Carlo, Barbara/Mrs. Latch in the world premiere of The Hours (Puts/Pierce), and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. She sings a solo recital at the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona as a finalist of the El Primer Palau competition as well a solo recital for Ukraine for the Embassy Series in DC. She will also return to the Brooklyn Art Song Society to sing Shostakovich’s From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op. 79 and makes her Symphony in C debut, singing Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate.

 

For the 2021-22 season, Ms. Nowakowski joined the roster of The Metropolitan Opera for the first time to cover Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor and Gilda in Rigoletto. She sang Shostakovich’s Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok, Op. 127 with the Brooklyn Art Song Society and, as a recipient of the Beebe Fund fellowship, spent most of her season in Poland researching Polish music for her new album of Polish art song, “KRAINA (Homeland)”, available on streaming platforms through Lexicon Classics.

 

Ms. Nowakowski was scheduled to begin her 2020-21 season by joining the roster of The Metropolitan Opera to cover the role of Olympia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann (COVID19). She was also slated to be presented in multiple concert venues, including the Carnegie Hall Citywide Concert Series, a return to the Columbus Symphony for Haydn’s Creation, and a debut with the National Symphony Orchestra for Mahler’s 4th Symphony under Gianandrea Noseda. She made her debut in Poland in a New Year’s Eve Gala with the Opera Bałtycka in Gdańsk, Poland. In the summer of 2021, Ms. Nowakowski returned to Wolf Trap Opera as Johanna in Sweeney Todd and La Fée in Viardot’s Cendrillon. To finish off the season, she sang a solo recital for The Sembrich Museum.

 

In 2020, Ms. Nowakowski was scheduled to sing the role of Hilde Mack in Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers (COVID19) at Wolf Trap Opera where she made her debut in the summer of 2015, covering Susanna and performing Due Donne. She was invited back in 2019 where she performed the role of Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos to critical acclaim, including that of the Washington Classical Review, stating that she “brought strength and sincerity” and “finessed the coloratura demands of the aria ‘Grossmächtige Prinzessin’ with panache and airy nuance, as refreshing as a gin fizz.” 

 

As a Cafritz Young Artist at the Washington National Opera for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, Ms. Nowakowski performed the roles of Papagena and the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute at the Kennedy Center, as well as the role of Anna Gomez in The Consul staged by Francesca Zambello with the DCYAP. She performed Nannetta in scenes from Falstaff as well as Clorinda in scenes from La Cenerentola in concert with the WNO Orchestra under the baton of Joseph Colaneri on the Kennedy Center stage. 

 

Ms. Nowakowski has had a string of recent solo orchestral debuts, including Mozart’s Requiem with the Columbus Symphony, a NYE Concert with The Philadelphia Orchestra, and as Gilda in a concert version of Rigoletto, broadcast on medici.tv with the Verbier Festival. No stranger to medici.tv, she was also broadcast live as a participant in Joyce DiDonato’s Masterclass at Carnegie Hall in 2019, as well as in 2018 as a semi-finalist for the inaugural Glyndebourne Opera Cup. Additional recent solo performance credits include a solo recital at The Phillips Collection as the First Prize winner of the Vocal Arts DC Art Song Discovery Competition as well as her debut performance of Bach’s B minor Mass with the Bach Society Houston.

 

A highly successful competitor, Ms. Nowakowski was recently awarded First Prize in the Opera Columbus Cooper-Bing Competition, the Partners for the Arts Competition, the Marcella Sembrich International Voice Competition with the Kosciuszko Foundation, and is a winner of the 2019 Astral National Auditions. She is a First Prize winner of the Gerda Lissner Foundation Competition and the Violetta DuPont Competition. She won Second Prize in the James Toland Vocal Arts Competition, the Gerda Lissner Lieder/Song Competition, FAVA’s Grand Concours de Chant, and the Dorothy-Lincoln Smith Voice Competition. She has garnered other significant top awards from the Loren L. Zachary Society Vocal Competition and the Giulio Gari Foundation Competition and was a 2020 Second Place Winner from Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in the Middle Atlantic Region.

 

As a candidate for her Artist Diploma at the Academy of Vocal Arts, Ms. Nowakowski performed the roles of Zerbinetta and Najade in Ariadne auf Naxos, the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, Gilda in Rigoletto, Sophie in Werther, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi, and Musetta in La bohème. Other role highlights include Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel with the Philadelphia Sinfonia, and Dido in Dido and Aeneas with the Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana.

​

Ms. Nowakowski holds an Artist Diploma from AVA and a bachelor’s degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.