Ashley Galvani Bell
The “delightful” (Opera News) soprano Ashley Galvani Bell has been performing from an early age, debuting as a member of the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus at age nine and making her Off-Broadway debut at sixteen in the world premiere of the musical The Golden Touch. Ms. Bell has since performed as a soloist in the United States, Italy, Spain, France and Russia, where she has been celebrated for her “large voice, dark in her low notes and shimmering in her upper register, with a powerful and overwhelming middle voice and furthermore with world class acting that ignite(s) her entire performance with expressiveness” (La Rioja).
Bell’s 2023-24 season includes producing and performing the title role in Divaria Productions’ Giovanna D’Arco/Maid of Orleans at the Bay Street Theatre; singing the role of Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and reprising the title character in Pedro Halffter’s Klara at the Teatro Pérez Galdos in Gran Canaria, a role she originated and has performed at Harvard University and in several venues in Spain.
In 2023, Bell made her debut with ABAO Bilbao Opera as Fiordiligi in Cosi Fan Tutte where ProOpera highlighted her “superabundance of talent.” Other recent highlights include her debut with Seville’s Teatro Maestranza as Violetta in La Traviata, performing the role of Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly with both Bohème Opera New Jersey and Daytona Beach Symphony Society; singing as soprano soloist with Milan’s Orchestra UNIMI in Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate; playing Mimì in La Bohème with Opera Modesto; singing the title role in the world premiere of Penelope’s Dream and as soprano soloist in Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony with Festival of Villafranca del Bierzo, Spain; joining ABAO Bilbao for Zemlinsky’s Eine Florentische Tragödie, and reprising one of her signature roles, Elle in La Voix Humaine, which she has sung at Spain’s Rioja Forum, the Bay Street Theatre, and with New York Opera Fest.
Bell’s “poignant, vulnerable” performances (Opera News) have brought her to Semana Lírica de Logroño Festival in Rioja, Spain; Teatro Sociale in Brescia, Italy; Opera du Périgord in Thiviers, France; New York City Opera, Teatro Grattacielo, Mississippi Opera, Natchez Festival, Townsend Opera, Sarasota Opera, New Jersey Verismo Opera, Salome
Chamber Orchestra, Mid-Atlantic Opera, Teatro Lirico D’Europa, Opera New Hampshire and the Narnia Festival in Italy with the Orchestra Filarmonica di Roma.
Bell sang the role of Norina in Don Pasquale at the Rioja Forum in Spain where La Rioja said she was, “unstoppable in her brilliant singing and a true ‘stage animal’ with her hilarious interpretation.” Other recent roles have included Donna Anna in Don Giovanni; Desdemona in Otello; Anna in Catalani’s Lorelei; Gilda in Rigoletto; Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro; Adina in L’elisir d’amore; Beauty in Giannini’s Beauty and the Beast; 1st Lady in Die Zauberflöte; Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi; Chauve-Souris in Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortileges; Dorothée in the U.S. premiere of Offenbach’s La bonne d’Enfant; and the role of Isabella Colbran in the premiere of Discovering Mrs. Rossini at the Sheen Center in New York. She also sang Molpe in Choreo Theatro’s world premiere of the Odyssey at 92Y; Serpina in La serva padrona Off-Broadway and on tour in Arizona; Clarina in Rossini’s La Cambiale di Matrimonio; Guadalena in Offenbach’s La Perichole; Despina in Cosi Fan Tutte and Katrina in Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
During the pandemic, Bell produced and starred in the documentary film Rival Queens featuring music from Maria Stuarda, which has won 20 awards in international film festivals including Best Documentary at Madrid Art Film Festival and Tokyo Film Festival.
Bell made her Carnegie Hall debut as a soloist in Hadyn’s “Lord Nelson” Mass and Schubert’s Mass in C with MidAmerica Productions. She has performed in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Orquesta Sinfonica de Madrid/Titular de Teatro Real, the Festival de Villafranca del Bierzo, and the Gainesville Symphony. She has also sung the solos in Handel’s Messiah, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle Vivaldi’s Gloria, Fauré’s Requiem and Schubert’s Mass in G. She frequently sings in recital with organ and has performed with Trinity College Vespers under the direction of renowned organist John Rose.
Fluent in Spanish, Bell has appeared in zarzuela productions with Rioja Lirica in Spain and New York City, including the lead in Serrano’s La Dolorosa. She was soprano soloist in the Italian Cultural Institute and Basilica of St. Patrick Old Cathedral’s commemoration of the 175th Anniversary of Lorenzo da Ponte.
Bell is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale University with distinction in Italian and International Studies and speaks five operatic languages fluently. She is a recipient of Yale’s Browne Irish Performing Arts Award and of a Scholarship Award at the Crested Butte Music Festival.
November 2023
Current & Upcoming Performances
Past Performances
Elle in La Voix Humaine in Rioja Forum, Spain
“The soprano Ashley Bell may well have been the person for whom this opera was written, for her brilliant suitability to the intense vocalism that Poulenc demands, with a large voice, dark in her low notes and shimmering in her upper register, with a powerful and overwhelming middle voice and furthermore with world class acting that ignited her entire performance with expressiveness. You might think that an opera with just one female character speaking on the phone with the lover who has left her would be boring, but you have to see how well it works in the hands of a powerful singer and actress like Ashley Bell: it will take your breath away.” – Eduardo Aisa, La Rioja
Elle in La Voix Humaine in New York Opera Fest
“Vocally, Bell crafted a complex Elle.. it was the tender approach that Bell takes, in effect of her own response to Elle’s mental chaos, that brought this character and entire story to life. Bell’s voice is a landscape of unknown depths, in which she conjured a schizophrenic spectrum that easily navigated Cocteau’s story and Poulenc’s music.” – Jennifer Pyron, Opera Wire
“Bell has an unusually lush soprano with just the right amount of rich vibrato riding in her songs….Bell uses this tone to range her portrait from a desperate lover’s last conversation to playful flirtation and the offer of her dog as a companionate reminder of past love.” – Susan Hall, Berkshire Fine Arts
Elle in La Voix Humaine at Bay Street Theatre
“ Ms. Bell dazzled the Bay Street opera loving audience with perhaps her strongest performance on the Bay Street stage to date. Her emotions, her physical acting augmented her beautiful voice as she exemplified the essence of a lover in suicidal pain over a failed relationship. Hearing and watching Ashley Galvani Bell sing in French seemed to put the audience in a trance of awe of Ms. Bell’s talents… Ashley Galvani Bell always delivers a strong and memorable performance and in “La Voix Humaine,” she was at the top of her skill set all evening long” –TJ Clemente, Easthampton Patch
“Saturday night’s riveting performance of The Human Voice at Bay Street was an artistic triumph..Ms. Bell’s exquisite soprano voice, intense facial expressions, and expressive body language made you feel the full depth of this character’s despair.. I left the theatre blown away by the extraordinary level of talent that I had just witnessed from this unforgettable production.” –Cindi Sansone-Braff, Southampton Patch
Violetta in La Traviata at Teatro de la Maestranza (Seville, Spain)
“Ashley Galvani Bell brought the courtesan of act one to life, with a formidable stage performance and a brilliantly penetrating high register (she topped it off with the traditionally imposed high E flat). She marked the evolution of the character well..She was moving in the last sentences of her intervention (in the last “gioia” she called to mind the woman from the beginning)..” – El Diario de Sevilla, Pablo J. Vayón
“The alternate cast of this emblematic operatic title achieved an outstanding theatrical show with a high musical level..Ashley Galvani Bell was perfectly acclimatized to the demanding coloratura of the first act, she approached with as much emotion as precision, as well as a now thicker and more refined voice, the dramatic second act, where she also exhibited an extraordinary chemistry with her antagonist, Giorgio Germont..” –Juan Jose Roldán, El Correo
