About Adia
Hailed in the New York Classical Review for her “caramel-toned voice” with a “strong bottom to gleaming top,” soprano Adia Evans has performed with Lyric Opera Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, Merola Opera Program, Fort Worth Opera, Opera Columbus, Tulsa Opera, and Knoxville Opera, among others. Evans has won top prizes from the George and Nora London Foundation, the Sullivan Foundation, Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, James Toland Vocal Competition, and many others.
Adia’s 2026-27 season begins with a highly anticipated role debut of Ariadne/Prima Donna in Ariadne auf Naxos with Merola Opera Program. Adia makes her German debut at the Staatstheater Kassel as Senta in Wagner’s iconic Der fliegende Holländer this fall, followed by the Mother in Hänsel und Gretel at the same house.
A recent graduate of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center, Evans spent the 2025-26 season singing the First Frida Image in El último sueño de Frida y Diego, and covering the Prima Ancella in Cherubini’s Medea. She also covered the role of Liù in Turandot with the Classic Opera Series at City Hall in Detroit, Michigan.That summer, Evans was a young artist in the 2025 Britten Pears Young Artist Programme in Aldeburgh, England, performing a recital of diverse art song repertoire. In Lyric's 2024-25 season, Evans sang Theresa Alvarez in Missy Mazzoli’s The Listeners, Girlfriend 2 in Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s Blue, and Countess Ceprano in Rigoletto.
In the 2023-24 Season, Evans debuted at The Cliburn in Recital with Jake Heggie, the Dayton Philharmonic (Handel's Messiah), and Annapolis Opera (First Lady in The Magic Flute). Other recent highlights include Mimì in La Bohème with the Borderland Arts Foundation and Beethoven's 9th Symphony with the National Orchestral Institute under the baton of Marin Alsop.
Evans spent the summer of 2023 as an Apprentice Artist with Santa Fe Opera where she covered the role of Foreign Princess in Rusalka and the titular role of Tosca. She also performed the role of Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in the Apprentice Artist Scenes. Earlier in the season, Evans played High Priestess and covered the titular role in Aida, and The Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors with Fort Worth Opera. Evans was a participant in the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco, Evans was featured as First Lady in their production of Die Zauberflöte. Her performance in the Merola Grand Finale was praised as “vivid, beautiful, and sweeping” (Opera Tattler)
A frequent recitalist and concert soloist, Evans' most recent appearance was as a soloist alongside Michael Banwarth for Classical Music Chicago's Dame Myra Hess Recital Series, and several recitals in the Ryan Opera Center’s Recital Series featured on WFMT Chicago. Evans’s 2024-25 season included a recital in collaboration with baritone Brandon Bell, featuring the work of Toni Lester at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. In previous seasons, Evans performed Mahler’s 4th Symphony with Avanti Orchestra, covered the solos of Damien Geter’s An African American Requiem with Fort Worth Opera, featured on the 2021 PBS Special Knox Opera for All! with Knoxville Opera, and was a guest soloist in Tulsa Opera’s 2022 MLK Day Parade, performing a short recital of repertoire by Black composers. Evans has performed the soprano solos in Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de confessore, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
A formidable vocal competitor, Evans was most recently named a 2026 Winner of the George and Nora London Foundation Competition. This season, she also won the 2025 Lola Fletcher Award by the American Opera Society of Chicago. In 2024, Evans was named a Winner of the Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshana Foundation, winner of the Igor Gorin Memorial Award from the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, and Tulsa District Winner and Third Place in the Midwest Region of the 2024 Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition; she also traveled to Tbilisi, Georgia, to compete as the sole representative of the USA in the Opera Crown Competition finals with the Tbilisi State Orchestra. Evans is a recipient of the prestigious William Matheus Sullivan Foundation Award in 2022.
In 2023, she was awarded 2nd Place and the Soprano Prize in the George Shirley Vocal Competition, 3rd Place in the Washington International Competition, 1st Place in the Dallas Opera Guild Lonestar Vocal Competition, 3rd Place in the Midwest Region of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, and a winner in the Tulsa District of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition. In 2022, she won 1st Place and Audience Choice in the James Toland Vocal Competition and an Encouragement Award from the Tennessee District of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition.
Evans holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Maryland and a Master of Music degree from the University of Tennessee as part of the Knoxville Opera Studio. She is also a proud alumna of the Baltimore School for the Arts.