Maria Elena Altany is a soprano based in Los Angeles known for her fearless performances. Specializing in contemporary classical music, she is a Resident Artist with avant garde opera company The Industry, under the artistic direction of Yuval Sharon. Upon her debut with LA Opera as Susana in Figaro! 90210, Opera News called her "delightfully smart and quicksilver." In May 2021 she premiered Mark Grey’s new chamber opera Birds in the Moon with the New York Philharmonic as part of its Bandwagon 2 festival. Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times noted that she “sang with sinuous flexibility.” When Birds made its West Coast premiere at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica in September 2021, Mark Swed of the LA Times wrote that Altany “soars in song, her power revealed through her voice.”
2021 engagements also included a filmed version of Mozart’s Opera Tales with LA Opera Connects and the LA Public Library, recording the new cantata “Six Feet Apart” with LA contemporary vocal ensemble HEX, and the final workshop of Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding’s opera Iphigenia at The Broad Stage. In March 2020, Maria Elena sang the role of Arrival in the world premiere of Sweet Land, the most recent production from The Industry composed by Du Yun and Raven Chacon. Upcoming performances include Birds in the Moon at Performance Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico; the role of Sacrifice in a workshop of Carla Lucero’s opera Tres Mujeres de Jerusalén with LA Opera, and Johanna in Sweeney Todd for LA Opera Connects and the Huntington Library.
Other recent pre-pandemic performances include repeat engagements with the LA Philharmonic in John Cage’s opera Europeras in collaboration with The Industry, and in Ragnar Kjartansson’s BLISS in collaboration with wild Up, led by Christopher Rountree. In addition to Figaro! (90210), about which LA Weekly wrote, "The cast all have great comic timing, especially a wide-eyed, flexibly limbed Altany," her engagements with LA Opera include a tour as Sinopa in The Marriage of Figueroa with LA Opera Connects and numerous community outreach recitals. Other highlights include a concert tribute to Yma Sumac as part of the Hammer Museum's Radical Women series, debuting the role of Cosimo in the world premiere of Galileo with The Industry, debuting the role of Jessie in Hail, Poetry! with Opera a la Carte, the Najade in Ariadne auf Naxos with Pacific Opera Project, and soloist in Rand Steiger's NIMBUS at Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the LA Philharmonic's Green Umbrella Series.
The American Chronicle declared that Altany's “lovely operatic voice captivates the audience” as Rose Maybud in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Ruddigore with the Sierra Madre Playhouse. StageandCinema.com praised her “silvery soprano” for her featured role in the celebrated premiere of Crescent City – the inaugural production of the ground-breaking company The Industry, LA, directed by Yuval Sharon and composed by Anne LeBaron. Since then, she has performed in every one of The Industry’s productions, including as a soloist for a record-breaking rendition of Terry Riley’s “In C,” the sold-out LA run of Christopher Cerrone’s Pulitzer-finalist, Invisible Cities, an opera for headphones and as Lucha in Hopscotch: an opera for 24 cars, for which she was featured in The New Yorker. She made her professional debut in 2011 as Kate in Opera San Luis Obispo’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Yeoman of the Guard. The International Review of Music has called her "as adorable as any soubrette has a right to be."
Maria Elena Altany has been heard as Rapunzel in Sondheim's Into The Woods, Baby Doe in The Ballad of Baby Doe, Gasparina in Haydn’s La Canterina, and Mrs. Hildebrand in Kurt Weil’s Street Scene, Adina in The Elixir of Love and Cupidon in Orpheus in the Underworld. She made her company debut with Long Beach Opera in 2014 in John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer.
Concert appearances include John Luther Adams' Sila:Breath of the World with the Ojai Music Festival in Ojai, California and at UC Berkeley, a concert with LA Opera at the Getty Museum following a lecture by maestro James Conlon, the title role in Ellen Reid’s Winter’s Child and Sophia in Alex Vassos’ The House is Open as part of First Take, a concert workshop of new operas at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum. Other concert work has included singing the soprano solos in Dubois’ Seven Last Words of Christ, Mozart’s Requiem, Fauré’s Requiem and Rutter’s Gloria.
In 2010 Maria Elena was the subject of Mandi Gosling’s mixed-media short documentary, Colors of a Soprano. She is featured in KCET’s ArtBound documentary Invisible Cities, as well as on the live recording of Crescent City by Innova Records, and on the commercial recording of Invisible Cities, released in November of 2014, by The Industry Records. A student of flamenco dance for over 10 years, she has performed with the acclaimed flamenco company Yaelisa y Caminos Flamencos.
