Biography

Kendall Gladen is a graduate of Washington University and a former Adler Fellow with the San Francisco Opera, where she was a member of the Merola Program. Ms. Gladen made her San Francisco Opera debut as Giovanna in Rigoletto and has also appeared as Mercédès in Carmen, the Second Lady in The Magic Flute, and Elizabeth Keckly in the world premiere of Philip Glass’s Appomattox. She has performed throughout the US, having appeared with the Los Angeles Opera, Florida Grand Opera, at the Washington National Opera (as Lily in Porgy and Bess), New Orleans Opera (as Maddalena in Rigoletto), the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina (in Amistad), and in several roles at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Ms. Gladen was a soloist in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra in 2007 and made her SFS debut in that work in 2008, in performances conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. During the 2010-11 season, Kendall Gladen returned to the Los Angeles Opera as Maddalena in Rigoletto, which was also the role in which she made her Italian debut at the Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi in Padua. Last year she made her debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in the title role of Carmen, and this season she returned to the San Francisco Opera in that work. Ms. Gladen also performed recently at the National Philharmonic in Handel’sMessiah, and at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in Carmen. On the concert stage, she has appeared with the New World Symphony, National Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Kendall Gladen has been granted the Career Achievement Award from the Monsanto Fund, the Gunther & Isle Kern Award by the Sarasota Opera Endowment Fund, and an encouragement award from the Sullivan Foundation. During her four years in the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’s Gerdine Young Artists Program, Ms. Gladen received the Richard Gaddes Award, and the Wedgewood and Kenneth Billups Award. She was a first-place district and second-place regional prizewinner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and also won first place in the National Association of Teachers of Singing Competition.

(June 2012)