Interview by Eldee Eyimife, AGMA Communications Coordinator
Madelin Morales grew up in a New Jersey family with no musicians, but thanks to her Cuban parents’ love for the arts and their proximity to New York City, she attended multiple Broadway shows. This early exposure molded her, as she put it, into “the child that was constantly singing and dancing.” Long before she understood that the performing arts could be a career path, she took dance classes, then musical theater. Opera entered the picture when her voice teacher at a community music school happened to be an opera singer and nudged her toward arias.
At 11, Madelin had never heard the word ‘opera’ and wanted nothing more than a spot in a Broadway chorus. Her teacher encouraged her, promising her that classical technique would eventually let her sing anything.
“I was happy to be there, so I agreed,” Madelin joked. “We started with the 24 Italian art songs, and I immediately fell in love. I loved the challenge of that style of singing, and it came pretty naturally to me too, which is such a great motivator for a kid.”
By the time she was 15, at a summer program at the Brevard Music Center, that motivation turned into something closer to conviction. One night, almost by chance, she wandered into an orchestra concert and heard Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring for the first time.
“I felt the music in my body like nothing I’d experienced before. The moment the performance ended, I started crying because it had moved me so deeply. I felt a little overwhelmed, honestly. I remember telling my Resident Advisor, who was a cellist, that I’d never experienced anything like it, and she told me that this is the life I’d be getting into if I decided to pursue it. In general, I love how powerful music is and how it can move people—there’s really nothing like it.”
The next summer, she performed opera scenes for the first time at Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute, fully aware that there was no turning back from a life in music.
Even that early in her life as a singer, Madelin sought ways to weave her heritage into the operatic picture. She was 11 years old when she first told her voice teacher what she wanted to sing. It wasn’t the aria on the page in front of her. It was something else, in Spanish. She may not have had the words to articulate it yet, but she knew how advocacy showed up: through her grandparents who came to every recital and sat through every school concert.
“They would come to my recitals and shows, and enjoy them, but they never fully understood what I was singing. From a young age, I made it known that I wanted to sing in Spanish so my family could understand and be part of what I loved.”
She got the chance at the Eastman School of Music, in her first lesson with voice teacher Kathryn Cowdrick. A large part of Cowdrick’s teaching philosophy was built on a single phrase: students should learn to “sing their DNA”—to seek out the music that came from their own culture and carry it into the classical world alongside the standard repertoire.
“That philosophy of ‘singing your DNA’ became my focus throughout undergrad. I got interested in finding Cuban songs and arranging Cuban folk songs into classical settings I could perform at school or auditions.”
During her sophomore year, she got her chance to take that even further. Her classmate, Travon Walker, started a project in Rochester that brought together artists from underrepresented backgrounds in classical music. Each artist was tasked with finding a song from their culture by an underrepresented composer, filming a presentation about it, and recording themselves performing it.
“Learning, researching, and presenting Cuban songs—knowing the videos would go out to schools in Rochester to show that classical music is for everyone—opened my eyes to what I could do,” Madelin recalled. “When we finally performed in person for those students, they were genuinely interested in what my colleagues and I had to say about the songs we’d each chosen from all over the world. I fell in love with that experience, and it set me on a path of seeking out music by Latino composers to program for myself.”
After searching through repertoire upon repertoire on what to base her master’s recital on, to no avail, she saw Buena Vista Social Club on Broadway. The show’s blend of Cuban salsa and social-club sound left her in tears and set her on the path to building something similar of her own. She called the recital Todos Mis Amigos, a love letter to community. She built its centerpiece around three songs from that same Buena Vista catalog, arranged from scratch since no sheet music existed.
Her family came to see it knowing only that it involved “something from Buena Vista.” For the first time, they weren’t just watching Madelin perform—they understood every word. It closed a loop she’d been chasing since she was a kid: making music her family could actually be part of.
Now, as Madelin steps into positions like DEI Representative at Central City Opera (CCO), she makes a point of fostering accessibility across language and ethnic barriers.
“This past summer, I took it upon myself to put on events throughout the summer to promote accessibility, diversity, and inclusion among the cohort. We held a grant-writing workshop with a panel of CCO administrators with grant-writing experience, so young artists could learn how to run their own projects that uplift underrepresented composers and artists. We also held a panel on using art as a means of social change, featuring soprano Daniela Guzman, who does a lot of bilingual work with the Hispanic community in Colorado.”
Madelin Morales always felt pulled to represent her culture on the stages she graces. She seamlessly intertwined her Hispanic heritage with her academic career. That instinct, to make room in a classical art form for the language and music of her own family, has shaped nearly every chapter of her career since. From a Rochester classroom project during the pandemic, to a recital she titled Todos Mis Amigos, and now to her first season as a resident artist mezzo-soprano with Shreveport Opera, we can’t wait to see what she does next.