Interview by Eldee Eyimife, AGMA Communications Coordinator
Efrain Solis began his musical journey in church, surrounded by live music and a strong Latin American influence woven into worship. As a child, he performed on the church altar, sang in the choir, and appeared in his first musical by the time he reached the fifth grade. These opportunities, spurred by his father, a church musician, snowballed into multiple competition wins and his most recent accomplishment: debuting at the Metropolitan Opera as Salvador Dalí in the 2025-2026 season world premiere of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
Efrain also credits his teachers for nurturing his fascination with music. In high school, even teachers outside the music department found ways to make room for his growing obsession, allowing him to write papers analyzing operatic characters or give a presentation on the musical 1776 during a unit on the Constitution.
That support, from family and teachers alike, has carried him through a decade-plus AGMA career that began in 2014, when he joined the Adler Fellowship at San Francisco Opera. But ask Efrain what he credits most for his success, and the answer is immediate: Spanish, the language he grew up speaking.
“Spanish has been a great influence for me as a singer, not just because the understanding of pure vowels is important, but because of a certain inflection it added. Singing in Italian and French came easier because of the phonetic background I had in Spanish,” he says. “We hear a lot about ‘Italianate’ sounds or ‘French’ sounds, but I was always encouraged to sing with my own natural sound, and that meant a lot to me.”
Efrain vividly recalls the moment when he embraced the advantage his first language gave him. While training with Steve Blier, a faculty member at Juilliard, at the Merola Opera Program, he was constantly reminded of his unique tone.
“I was singing my arias, and he asked what my favorite song was, to which I mentioned “El día que me quieras” by Gardel,” Efrain recounts. “He played it and had me sing along, then switched into the aria I was actually working on. If he felt I was falling into cliché, or not being true to myself vocally, he’d go back to the song. That’s how he showed me I’ll always find my natural voice and placement when I sing in Spanish.”
It’s a technique Efrain returns to whenever he feels vocally frustrated or struggles with something technically. By singing in Spanish, he can ground himself and his voice in what feels like home and an ever-present framework he can rely on.
Performing in Hispanic roles and singing in his native language, Efrain has found, is also where he receives the fewest notes.
“There were seasons where half my work was Spanish opera, and I was so happy about that—one, because we have a duty to tell these stories, our stories, and two, because it gives you a sense of ownership over your culture and yourself,” he explains. “No one’s going to tell me how to sing in Spanish. Obviously there are technical elements to work on, but when I sing Spanish opera, that’s when I get the fewest notes, because it’s my native language. I understand the style and the significance of these roles.”
That conviction isn’t new. While going through his parents’ house recently, Efrain found a framed newspaper clipping from a high school competition in which a teacher highlighted his answer to the question of where he saw himself in ten years: bringing Spanish opera to the mainstream.
Since winning that competition, he’s subconsciously built a body of work that fulfills his teenage aspiration, including Cruzar la Cara de la Luna and multiple Daniel Catán operas, with another lined up next season.
Throughout his entire career, Efrain treated his heritage as an anchor. As he travels wherever a contract takes him, he builds small rituals that center him and connect him to home: a coffee shop, a regular restaurant, a familiar path for evening strolls. Regardless of the stage he finds himself on, from the church in Santa Ana to the Met to the Minnesota Opera, Efrain Solis’s path has stayed remarkably consistent. He found his voice in Spanish, and he has never stopped finding his way back to it.