Ilana Davidson
Ilana Davidson is an American operatic soprano with an international career in opera and concerts. She has appeared on stage around the world and on recordings, including William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience with Leonard Slatkin and the University of Michigan chorus and orchestra; that recording won four Grammy Awards, including Best Classical Album, in 2006. She is also the co-artistic director of the ClassicalCafe chamber music series.
She grew up in the Philadelphia area and earned a Bachelor of Music from Carnegie Mellon University, followed by a Master of Music in Opera Performance and Voice from the Curtis Institute of Music. While at Curtis she sang roles such as the young girl in Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Despina in Così fan tutte, the Lady with a Hand Mirror in Postcard from Morocco, and Atalanta in Serse. She was a vocal fellow at Tanglewood, received a William Matheus Sullivan Music Foundation Grant, and participates in the Aston Magna Early Music Academy.
Her stage work includes Papagena in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the Staatsoper Stuttgart (European debut), a Carnegie Hall solo debut in Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience with the St. Louis Symphony conducted by Bolcom, and performances in Vienna, Amsterdam, and Schwetzingen. She has sung Bach and Handel concert works with groups like the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the New York Baroque Soloists, and appeared in premieres such as Libby Larson’s Everyman Jack and Glass and Moran’s The Juniper Tree at Avery Fisher Hall. She also performed at the New York Festival of Song in 2015 and has appeared at the Bard Music Festival with the American Symphony Orchestra.
In opera houses, she has performed with the Dutch National Opera in roles such as Amor in Orfeo ed Euridice, Gepopo in Le Grand Macabre, the first Flowermaiden in Parsifal, Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. She has sung at Florida Grand Opera (Flora in The Turn of the Screw, Amore in L’incoronazione di Poppea) and at Glimmerglass Opera.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:51 (CET).