Beteag, Gabrielle
(Atlanta, Georgia)
American mezzo Gabrielle Beteag brings a fresh joy and commanding warmth to repertoire spanning bel canto to contemporary works. Praised as a “showstopper” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Beteag’s recent performance in the Merola Grand Finale concert was hailed as “a virtuoso display of rhythmic precision and vocal exuberance.” She is currently a second-year Adler Fellow with San Francisco Opera, where her upcoming assignments include Voice from Above in Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten and Image No. 3 in El último sueño de Frida y Diego, the new opera by Gabriela Lena Frank and the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz.
Endlessly inspired by the challenges inherent in developing new work, Beteag counts her role creation of Iras in John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra during the Company’s Centennial Season as a career highlight. She is also proud to have given the West Coast premiere of Errollyn Wallen’s Roundel. Other recent performances include Mercédès in Carmen at The Atlanta Opera, where she was a Studio Player, Woman with Hat/Duchess in The Ghosts of Versailles at Chautauqua Opera, and Lady Billows in Albert Herring during her graduate studies at Georgia State University. She is an alum of the Merola Opera Program.
In 2020, Beteag fulfilled a long-held dream of winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She created the Songbook Sundays series, through which she shared her renditions of Golden Era jazz standards on social media, accompanying herself on the ukulele.
Other industry accolades include prizes from the Shreveport Opera Mary Jacobs Singer of the Year Competition, Opera Birmingham Vocal Competition, and Kristin Lewis Vocal Scholarship Competition, where she received the Grand Prize, which included studies at the Wiener Staatsoper.
Beteag loves sight-reading music, viewing it as a rapid-fire logic puzzle, inspiring her mission to convince others to join her passion for atonal music.