From Nashville Opera and El Paso Opera to concert performances with Barbra Streisand at Madison Square Garden and Mel Tormé with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Elly Erickson, an American soprano of Scandinavian descent, has performed in every thinkable setting.  Having performed over twenty leading roles in operas and musicals, Ms. Erickson has also won nearly twenty-five awards, among them the prestigious Jenny Lind Competition Award which led to a concert tour in Sweden, and performances with the P.T. Barnum Festival, Connecticut’s Playhouse on the Green, Special Olympics, and the Greater Bridgeport Symphony Pops to an audience of over 5,000.  

Passionate about her Nordic roots and cultural heritage, Ms. Erickson returned to Scandinavia on awards from the American-Scandinavian Foundation, Swedish Council of America, Norway-America Association, Ambassador John L. Loeb, Jr. Foundation, Martha Boschen-Porter Fund, and the Swedish Institute on the recommendation of the Swedish Consulate and Swedish Embassy.  While in Scandinavia,  she worked closely with Baritone Håkan Hagegård, Conductor Thomas Schuback, Composer Viktor Åslund, Pianists Per Arne Frantzen and Samuel Skönberg, and Folk Singers Camilla Granlien and Åshild Vetrhus.  

Hailed for her charm and stage-presence by music critics in Sweden, Ms. Erickson also “thrilled everyone with the range, clarity and astonishing force, yet awesome delicacy, of a seemingly seamless voice,” at one of her many American recitals of Nordic songs featuring Grieg, Sibelius, Stenhammar, Rangström, Petersen-Berger, Alfvén, Lindberg, Monrad Johansen, and Sjöberg.  Ms. Erickson has brought this music to American audiences at the Caramoor Center for the Arts, Joyce Dutka Arts Foundation Concert Series, Al Sly Concert Series, Scandinavian American Heritage Society’s Midsummer Festival and most recently, she has performed her unique concert of classical and folk songs by well-known and lesser-known Scandinavian composers, “A Nordic Tapestry: An Evening of Scandinavian Song,” at Scandinavia House, the 92^nd Street Y, and the Bronx Council on the Arts’ First Wednesday’s Series.  Her performances have been featured on WMNR Fine Arts Radio, WPLN Nashville Public Radio, Bronx Net, and The Arts in Westchester.

Called “first-rate” while performing with Nashville Opera, critics have praised the soprano especially for her signature role, the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute which she has been said to sing with “virtuosity and perfect intonation” as if the music were “written solely for her” and has performed the role with El Paso Opera, Taconic Opera, Opera Company of Brooklyn, and with her alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Praised for her character interpretations, Ms. Erickson often steals the show: “Of the stepsisters, the sassy and selfish Clorinda as played by Elly Erickson attracted much of the attention not only for total commitment to character, but also for the dramatic expression and purity of tone she brings to her aria of disappointment in not winning at love,” said The Times Herald-Record of her performance in Rossini’s Cinderella in the Catskills.  In a return performance with Taconic Opera as Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann, she was called “a very real doll [as] the mischievous automaton” and was applauded for “her perfect timing and silvery, sparkling reach.....a remarkable soprano!”  

Some of Ms. Erickson’s other operatic and musical theater performances include Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos), Adele (Die Fledermaus), Rosina (The Barber of Seville), Gretel (Hansel and Gretel), Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor), Oscar (Un ballo in maschera), Musetta (La Bohème), Lauretta (Gianni Schicchi), Frasquita (Carmen), Mabel (The Pirates of Penzance), Maria (West Side Story), Fiona (Brigadoon), Rosa Bud (The Mystery of Edwin Drood), and Catherine (Pippin).   The soprano’s oratorio and chamber repertoire includes Grieg’s Peer Gynt, Ravel’s Shéhérazade, Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras, Rorem’s Ariel, Foss’ 13 Way of Looking at a Blackbird, Poulenc’s Gloria, and Orff’s Carmina Burana.