Soprano Ashley Knight has earned distinction in wildly varied contexts, from the traditional opera stage to the underground music scene. Ms. Knight is passionately devoted to dusting the cobwebs off of the operatic art form and making it compelling to the opera fan and the uninitiated alike. Ms. Knight performs frequently with the renowned west coast performance troupe El Circo (www.elcirco.org), a collective of performers, musicians, artists, and all around mad geniuses. She is a regular performer at the San Francisco restaurant/performance venue Supperclub (www.supperclub.com), where she can be found tossing off vocal fireworks hanging from the rafters or climbing on the tables. Ashley is also deeply involved with original music composition and multimedia collaboration, including projects with electronic music producers Bassnectar, Random Rab, Boreta, Slidecamp, and an ongoing partnership with experimental filmmaker Gwendolyn Dearborn.
In the more traditional opera realm, Ashley has performed the roles of Morgana in Alcina (Handel), Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart), Rose in Street Scene (Weill), Nella in Gianni Schicchi (Puccini); partial roles include the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute (Mozart), the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti), Musetta in La Boheme (Puccini), Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann (Offenbach), the title role in Semiramide (Rossini), Adele in Die Fledermaus (J. Strauss), Sophie in Werther (Massenet), and the title role in Linda di Chamounix (Donizetti). Roles in preparation include Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos (R. Strauss), The Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute (Mozart), and Le Feu/La Princesse/Le Rossignol in L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (Ravel). Ms. Knight was recently named a finalist the senior division of the Pacific Musical Society vocal competition and the Henry and Maria Holt Competition.
Ms Knight holds a Bachelor of Music in vocal performance from the University of California at Santa Cruz where she received the Dean's award for achievement in music and the Classical Music scholarship under the tutelage of soprano Patrice Maginnis. She received further training from Patricia McCaffery at the International Institute of Vocal Arts in Chiari, Italy and in New York City. While in Italy, Ms. Knight appeared with the Accademia alla Scala in Milan, and performed in the Concerti Lirici series at Villa Mazzotti in Chiari. She now studies with Catherine Cook in San Francisco.