cherry duke,
mezzo-soprano

Hailed by the press as a "radiant and confident" performer, mezzo-soprano Cherry Duke has sung with many of America’s foremost companies. Her roles with New York City Opera, Opera Omaha, Chautauqua Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Connecticut Opera, Virginia Opera, New Orleans Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera Guild (to name a few) have earned her the praise and respect of music professionals and audience members alike. Cherry’s "striking voice-acting and stage movement" is especially evident in substantial dramatic roles such as Jo in Little Women and Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia. "Her singing proved crystal clear, beautifully consistent and always true to the meaning of the text." (Daily Progress) Additionally, she has sung the title roles in Hansel and Gretel and Carmen as well as leading and/or supporting mezzo roles in Madama Butterfly, Die Zauberflöte, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Falstaff, The Mikado, Albert Herring, Ein Walzertraum, L’enfant et les sortilèges, The Love for Three Oranges, Amahl and the Night Visitors and L’italiana in Algeri. The role of Hansel has become a regular fixture in Cherry’s career. She has performed it over 250 times across the United States in at least four different translations. She performs a variety of other "pants roles" with ease, "quelling any suspension of disbelief problems that can arise as woman plays man." These roles include Stephano in Romeo et Juliette, Enrico in Rossini’s Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra, Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, and the title role in The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

A Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions New York District Winner, Cherry is the recipient of many awards, including the Grand Prize in the Connecticut Opera Guild Young Artist Competition and the Liederkranz Foundation Voice Competition, among others.

Equally at home on the concert stage, Cherry Duke has performed with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, New England Symphonic Ensemble, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, Ventura Chamber Music Festival and the San Bernadino Symphony Orchestra. At Carnegie Hall she has sung solos in Handel’s Messiah (conducted by John Rutter), Beethoven’s Mass in C and Schubert’s Mass in B-flat. Cherry has also performed Bach’s B-Minor Mass and Weihnachts-Oratorium, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Vaughan-Williams’ Magnificat and Saint-Saëns’ Christmas Oratorio, and several orchestral "Pops" concerts.

A Fort Worth, Texas native, Cherry received her undergraduate degree in Vocal Performance from Texas Woman’s University where she studied with the prolific pedagogy and diction textbook author Joan Wall. She received her graduate degree in Opera from The Hartt School at the University of Hartford. Now a resident of New York City, Cherry Duke records for MusAcom, an e-commerce company which offers new products that support the teaching and learning of singing.