J’Nai Bridges, making her HGO mainstage debut, has graced the world’s top opera and concert stages. Other engagements during the 2023-24 season include performing the role of Carmen in debuts at Teatro Lirico di Cagliari and Hamburg State Opera; making her debut at New York Philharmonic performing Julia Perry’s Stabat mater; performing as a soloist in the Metropolitan Opera’s El Niño; and making her debut at Boston Symphony Orchestra in Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet. During her 2022-23 season, she performed the title role in Carmen with debut engagements at the Arena di Verona and Canadian Opera Company, and return engagements to Dutch National Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago. Her 2021-22 season highlights included numerous world premiere engagements as a guest artist in The Kennedy Center’s 50th Anniversary Season. She appeared in HGO’s inaugural Giving Voice recital in 2020.  Career highlights include the 2022 Grammy Award-winning Metropolitan Opera production of Akhnaten and 2021 Grammy Award-winning recording of Richard Danielpour’s oratorio The Passion of Yeshua with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra; her sold-out Carnegie Hall Recital debut; her role debut of Kasturbai in Satyagraha at LA Opera; her debuts at Dutch National Opera and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona; creating the role of Josefa Segovia in the world premiere of John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West at San Francisco Opera; and performing in the world premiere of Bel Canto at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. She is the recipient of numerous honors including the prestigious 2018 Sphinx Medal of Excellence Award, a 2016 Richard Tucker Career Grant, a 2012 Marian Anderson Award, and many more.