Alyson Cambridge

Alyson Cambridge is an American operatic soprano. In addition to opera, she sings classical song, jazz, and American songbook and popular song. She is also known for her work as a model, actress, and host.

In 2003 Cambridge won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, becoming the competition's youngest Grand Prize winner ever. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut the following year in Carmen. She was also awarded First Prize in the 2003 Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation International Voice Competition, First Prize in the 2004 George London Foundation Award, and the Régine Crespin Award at the 2008 Elardo International Opera Competition.

In 2010, her debut recording, From the Diary of Sally Hemings, was released, and made its premier at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. In 2016, Cambridge released her second solo album, with the jazz standards and American popular song-based Until Now. Her third album, Sisters in Song, with soprano Nicole Cabell and the Lake Forest Symphony, will be released in September 2018. She has served as brand ambassador for Swiss luxury watch and jewelry designer Chopard, as well as for fashion designers Vivianne Tam and Monika Chiang. In 2018, Cambridge is performing on Broadway, as one of the lead vocalists in Rocktopia, which fuses iconic 20th-century rock with classical masterpieces.

Cambridge was born and raised in Arlington, Virginia. Her father Richard, whose parents are from Guyana, immigrated to the United States for college at the age of 19 from Guyana on the Caribbean coast of South America, and is a principal economist at the World Bank. Her mother is from Minnesota, of Danish-Norwegian heritage, and works at the National Academy of Sciences. She grew up with diverse music being played in her home, as her mother played opera around the house, and was a big classical music (especially opera and symphonic music) fan, her father gravitated to Caribbean music, calypso, reggae, soca, disco, and jazz, and she loved Whitney Houston and Madonna.

Cambridge has gold-brown hair and green eyes. The Washington Post opined that her "25-inch waist and stunning features make her seem a natural for the catwalk, not for an opera house."

She started taking vocal lessons after a friend suggested that she do so, after hearing her jokingly pretend to sing opera. Cambridge's first voice lesson was at the Levine School of Music, at the age of 12, and she continued taking voice lessons at the school. She was a student at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. In high school, she was an athlete, played varsity soccer, participated in many popular extra-curricular activities, and she often hid the fact that she was studying classical singing, because she "didn't think it was cool."

Cambridge now lives in New York City, with her poodle-bichon named Lucy.

Cambridge attended university at Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, where she earned a double degree with honors in both—a B.M. in Voice Performance and a B.A. in sociology, with a concentration in pre-law. She decided in her senior year at Oberlin to pursue an operatic career full-time. She then continued her vocal studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, studying for a master's degree in Opera for one year.