Allison Charney

Soprano Allison Charney’s operatic career began in earnest following the national finals of the Metropolitan Opera Competition with her debut at the New York City Opera as Musetta in La Bohème. She has gone on to sing most of Puccini’s leading soprano roles in opera companies throughout the country, including the title roles in Madama Butterfly, Tosca and Suor Angelica, Mimi in La Bohème, and Liù in Turandot, earning a reputation for her “vocal agility, lush sound and dramatic portrayals” of the lirico-spinto roles in her wide-ranging repertoire. 

Ms. Charney has experienced enormous success with her Mozart interpretations as well, including both Susanna and the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, both Donna Anna and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and Sandrina in the rarely heard La Finta Giardiniera. She wowed audiences and critics throughout the USA with her tour-de-force portrayals of all three heroines in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann. Her versatility has also led her to sing roles as varied as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, Micaëla in Carmen, Nedda in Pagliacci, Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, and the title roles in Martha, La Traviata, Jenufa and The Merry Widow. Ms. Charney’s career has brought her to opera companies across the United States, including:

• New York City Opera 

• Atlanta Opera

• Florida Grand Opera

• Utah Opera

• Nashville Opera

• Opera Memphis

• Annapolis Opera

• Opera Theater of Connecticut

• Mississippi Opera

• Opera Illinois

• OperaDelaware

• Utah Festival Opera

• DiCapo OperaTheater

• Tampa Opera

• Opera Idaho

• Syracuse Opera

• Washington Summer Opera Festival

• Colorado Opera Festival 

Ms. Charney made her debut with the Lviv National Philharmonic in the middle of the war in the spring of 2024, premiering two new pieces by Kim D. Sherman and Moshe Knoll. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in the spring of 2022 as a featured soloist in the new composite song cycle, Forgotten Voices. 

Other concert highlights have included performances at Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, as a featured soloist with the esteemed Philadelphia Orchestra and with the Boston Pops under the baton of Alan Gilbert. Continuing her commitment to performing music of our times, Ms. Charney premiered Mr. Knoll’s Psalm 133 with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Barbara Day Turner, in a concert that also featured Ms. Sherman’s oratorio (composed for Ms. Charney) Songbird and the Eagle. Upcoming performances will include further premieres of pieces by Nilo Alcala, Michael Ching, Ms. Sherman and Mr. Knoll, whose Psalm 133 she recently sang in concert at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, where she was also the soprano soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Ms. Charney's latest album, A BRIDGE TO PEACE contains five new contemporary classical compositions: one composed by a Russian, one by a Ukrainian, one by an Iranian, one by an Israeli, and the title single "BRIDGE TO PEACE: Invocation," by an American woman, Kim D. Sherman. This title track, recorded in war-torn Ukraine and released on the Lexicon Classics label in August of 2024, sets one line of text - "Make peace on all your lands" - in 15 different world languages. 

Ms. Charney also sings the featured single on AVIE Records newly-released recording of Kelly Hall-Tompkins’ FORGOTTEN VOICES, and can be heard on Navona Records’ARK RESOUNDING, the ARK Trio’s debut album that has repeatedly reached #1 on the Amazon charts and was submitted for Grammy® consideration in the category of Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. She is also featured in the first recording of the Pulitzer Prize nominated oratorio Choose Life, by composer Mona Lyn Reese and can be heard in a CD of American songs with pianist, Benjamin Loeb, on the DSC Label. 

She is a co-creator of the series - Her/Music; Her/Story - which was launched at Steinway Hall in 2019 and is currently showcased in a four-part radio series on WQXR.  Ms. Charney is an active recitalist and master teacher and is the artistic and executive director of the long-running concert series,  PREFORMANCES™️ WITH ALLISON CHARNEY most recently presented in-person at Merkin Hall in New York City.

During the pandemic, Charney pivoted to the virtual stage where her concert and conversation series: SEASON OF HOPE launched the centennial year of New York City's historic Town Hall who then presented her OPERA AT HOME adaptation of Verdi's Otello - the first installment in her OPERAS IN SHORT series. 

After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude with highest honors, in Special Concentrations from Harvard University, she went on to earn two graduate degrees in music from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Charney now lives in New York with her husband and their two sons.