American soprano Jacqueline Piccolino has been deemed by the San Francisco Chronicle “an artist to watch” with “impeccable technique and stage presence” and “precisely placed coloratura.”
In 2024, Piccolino made her debut with Portland Opera in a concert of works by Puccini, and sang a recital at the St. Meinrad Archabbey. She also recently returned to Seattle Opera to perform the role of Woglinde in Das Rheingold with “incredibly full, entrancing, spinto-esque coloratura” (Northwest Reverb).
A participant in the Merola Opera Program and honored thereafter as a San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow, Piccolino made her professional debut as Stella in Les Contes d’Hoffmann. While there, she also sang First Lady in The Magic Flute, Lady Madeline in La chute de la maison Usher, Laura in Luisa Miller, 2nd Maid in the world premiere of Dolores Claiborne, Kate Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Clotilda in Norma, Mrs. Hayes in Susannah, and Arminda in La finta giardiniera.
Other notable roles on Piccolino’s résumé include Contessa Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Erste Dame in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and Fannì in Rossini’s Cambiale di Matrimonio. She recently covered Lady Billows in Albert Herring, Roksana in Szymanowski’s King Roger, and Kayla in Taking up Serpents with Chicago Opera Theater, and was contracted to cover the title role in Dvořák’s Rusalka for Santa Fe Opera in 2020. Piccolino has also recently been seen on stage at the Berkshire Opera Festival and Hawai’i Opera Theatre.
A frequent interpreter of Beethoven’s vocal works, Piccolino has enjoyed singing in concert as the soprano soloist in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Quad City Symphony, as Leonore in Fidelio with the Intermezzi Virtual Festival, and in Christus am Ölberge with the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. She also performed the Israelitish Woman in Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus with the North Shore Choral Society in Evanston, Illinois, and as the soloist in Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Johnstown Symphony.
In 2021, Ms. Piccolino was a National Semi-Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions as well as the First Prize Winner of the Partners for the Arts Inc. Competition. In 2020, she received the Eileen Deneen Award from the American Opera Society of Chicago and was also a Bursary Recipient by the Opera Awards Foundation. She has earned a first prize from The American Prize in Vocal Performance, the Igor Gorin Memorial Award from the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona, and the Rose M. Grundman Award from the Musicians Club of Women in Chicago. In addition, Piccolino has received awards from the Sullivan, Shoshana, and George London Foundations, and she was a finalist in the 9th International Stanisław Moniuszko Competition.
Piccolino honed her craft as a Studio Artist with the Wolf Trap Opera Company, a soloist in the Napa Festival del Sole’s Bouchaine Young Artist Concert Series, and as a participant in the Houston Grand Opera’s Young Artist Vocal Academy. She graduated with a Bachelor of Music Degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Music in 2013 and received the Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship from her alma mater. She currently resides in the beautiful city of Chicago.
January 2025
