Renee Richardson 

The Haitian-American soprano Renée Richardson hails from Springfield, Pennsylvania. Renee in her second year of the Sarah and Earnest Butler HGO Studio Artists program. This season at HGO, she is covering the lead role of the world-premiere opera, Intelligence, and will perform in the January production of Wagner’s Parsifal. Richardson is the muse for a group of art songs written by HGO’s internationally renowned Composer-In-Residence Joel Thompson. Stay tuned for more information on how to see her and Joel in action.

During her first-year as a Houston Grand Opera Studio artist, the 2022-23 season at HGO, she performed the role of Annina in La traviata, and Callas Woman in the world premiere of Jeremy Howard Beck’s Another City. This past summer she joined the Wolftrap Opera singing the role of Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Prior to her arrival at HGO, she received her Artist Diploma at the Academy of Vocal Arts where she studied with Bill Schuman. While at AVA, she sang Mimì in Puccini’s La Bohème, the Foreign Princess in Dvořák’s Rusalka, the title role and Suor Dolcina in Puccini’s Suor Angelica, and Inès in Donizetti’s La Favorite. She holds a Professional Studies Diploma in Voice from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where her roles included Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Béatrice in Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict, and the title roles in Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Cherubini’s Medea. Richardson has been seen in several Pensacola Opera productions including Carmen, La Bohème, and The Pirates of Penzance. She was also the recipient of an A. Grace Lee Mims Scholarship for Negro Spirituals.