Click here to go to the Oakland Lyric Opera website home Click here for details on our next performance Click here for info on artists who performed for us Our Staff Click here to see programs of our past performances We need your financial help. Click here to support us.

Darla Wigginton Mezzo-soprano

Darla has been praised for “. . . a rich and dramatic mezzo-soprano” (San Francisco Examiner); a voice of “. . . sultry richness, strength and silvery radiance” (Rutland Herald); as well as “. . . her vocal refinement and genuine comic timing” (San Francisco Chronicle).

She has sung with Portland Opera, Connecticut Opera, Opera Illinois, Natchez Opera Festival, Opera San Jose, Ash Lawn-Highland Summer Festival,

Opera Theater of Lucca (Italy), Opera at Florham, Pocket Opera, Jefferson Performing Arts Society, Eugene Opera, South Florida Opera, Lamplighters Music Theatre, Bronx Opera. West Bay Opera, Il Piccolo Teatro, Theatreworks and American Opera Projects.

Roles performed include the title roles in Carmen, La Cenerentola, Hansel and Gretel, as well as Rosina in The Barber of Seville, Mother in Amahl and The Night Visitors, the title role in Offenbach’s La Perichole, Elmire in Kirke Mechem’s Tartuffe; Mrs. McLean in Susannah, Mercedes in Carmen, Mrs. Nolan in The Medium, Second and Third Ladies in The Magic Flute and Bulotte in Bluebeard. On the concert stage Ms. Wigginton has sung Falla’s El Amor Brujo, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Handel’s Messiah and a chamber orchestra production of Handel’s Atalanta as well as concerts and recitals in California, Mississippi, Virginia, Vermont and Oregon.

Ms. Wigginton has worked on original pieces with new composers in George Coates’ Performance Works in San Francisco and The Friends and Enemies of New Music and American Opera Projects in New York. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, she also studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 1999, she was a finalist in Fort Worth Opera’s Margeurite McCammon Vocal Competition.