Angel Blue is flying high, as in demand at London’s Royal Opera House as she is back home at the Met. Growing up, the beauty pageant scene taught her all about competitions, but her first love was opera, a career that didn’t necessarily come easy. Fortunately, strong role models within a loving family and a powerful faith helped her triumph over adversity.
Angel Blue was just four when her father took her to Puccini’s Turandot. Even now, she doesn’t think anything will ever top that musical experience—the wonder of hearing an opera singer for the first time, of her dad explaining the different instruments in the orchestra. She fell in love with opera.
Watch Angel Blue's Musical America Awards interview
By the age of ten, Blue was singing Handel’s famous aria “Ombra mai fù” in her first competition. Despite her hopes, she didn’t win. “The judge gave me feedback that the song was too mature and not the right kind of thing for a ten-year-old. I was devastated,” Blue explains over Zoom from London, a city she adores, for reasons that become clear later. “My two sisters said, ‘Don’t worry, Angel. You can do it. You can still sing opera.’”
Fast forward 30-or-so years, and her sisters (she is one of five siblings) have been proven more than right. Known for her rich, powerful voice and radiant stage presence, the soprano is in London to sing the title role in Tosca at Covent Garden; her diary this year has also included Micaëla in Carmenat the Metropolitan Opera. She’s equally in demand for her Verdi and this year she starred in the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms.
Since that first childhood disappointment, the awards have rolled in. Two Grammys, a Beverly Sills Award, a Richard Tucker Award—and now the coveted Vocalist of the Year from Musical America. “It feels great,” she says of her latest accolade. “It’s always a good feeling to be recognized. That goes without saying.”
Yet for Blue it’s not so much the gong itself that matters as what it says about her artistry, a lesson learned during her years as a beauty pageant queen. Winning Miss Apple Valley, Miss Hollywood, and Miss Southern California helped fund her master’s degree in music at UCLA, but a state title, like Miss California, always eluded her, however hard she tried. “It taught me that it’s not the award that makes you who you are, it’s the fact you can do what you do.”
What then, I wonder, is she most proud of as a singer? “As I was getting into my Act II costume for Tosca last night, I said to myself that I have become the woman I looked up to when I was a little girl. And I’m really proud of that,” she says, naming her hard-working mother and grandmothers as personal role models, along with opera singers Leontyne Price and Renée Fleming. “To be an opera singer is very hard. I’m most proud of the fact I haven’t given up. I’d give myself my own award for ‘you’ve kept going.’”
There have been huge challenges along the way. In 2007, her father died. He’d given Blue her first voice lessons and encouraged her at every step, even as he was in the hospital in his final days. Two months after he passed away, she won a place on the prestigious Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program at Los Angeles Opera and her career seemed set on the right path. But by 2012, Blue was looking at a blank diary.
After a series of auditions in Berlin that had come to nothing, she called her mum. “I told her I’m going to quit opera. I don’t have any work. I’m not making any money. I’m getting closer to 30, and I can’t do this,” she remembers. “My mum said, ‘Angel, stop, stop. Look up.’ I looked up. She said, ‘We’re believers and God is with you. He’s given you this talent. If He wants you to use it, He’s going to make the way for you.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’”
Not long after, Blue got a call from the Royal College of Music asking if she would audition for a new opera called American Lulu. Then English National Opera wanted her as Musetta in La bohème. “Everything happened at once,” she says, with a smile. “London was the beginning of my career.”
Blue has been in demand ever since. Life is busy. At work she is “stressed-out but in love with the music—and joyful”; at home she is “goofy and caring—probably too much—and loves to laugh.”
Underpinning everything is her Christian faith. “Ultimately, I recognized my singing voice is a gift from God, and I really have one job. Make sure I take care of it and make sure I give Him the glory for letting me do it. That’s really simple if you think about it.” •
Rebecca Franks is an arts journalist, writer, and editor. She has been a classical music critic for The Times since 2015, reviewing concerts and opera around the U.K., as well as interviewing musicians. Previously, she worked on the editorial team of BBC Music Magazine for over a decade.
