Moments before she went onstage in “Aida” at the Metropolitan Opera on a recent night, the soprano Angel Blue was in her dressing room, smiling and blowing kisses on a livestream for fans.
Blue, who sings the title role in “Aida,” was emotional, telling her followers that she was thinking that evening about her father, Sylvester, who died in 2006 and, as a musician, helped inspire her interest in opera. She said she was singing for him, for her fans and for herself.
“I pray and hope that your dreams come true,” she said. “The things that you desire are at the tips of your fingers, if you will believe that. I know I believe it, and I kept believing it. And I’m realizing all my dreams right now by being here at the Met, singing this great opera.”
Blue, 40, a former model and beauty queen from Apple Valley, Calif., once doubted her path in opera, dispirited by a wave of rejections early in her career.
But she is now a regular on the world’s leading stages, including at the Met, whose new production of “Aida” will be simulcast to movie theaters around the world on Saturday. In this opera, she has found a defining role. Blue has been praised by critics for her shimmering voice and the intensity of her portrayal, and she has won acclaim from colleagues in the opera field.
“It’s truly a daunting challenge, and she accomplishes it with incredible beauty and security,” the star soprano Renée Fleming said. “She is also a consummate musician, with a sympathetic and powerful presence onstage.”
To prepare for Aida, a role that requires a big, soaring sound, she spent months immersed in the score. Sometimes, during long days in the practice room, she slammed the lid of the piano and threw her music across the room in frustration.
For years, Blue resisted “Aida,” a love story set against war between ancient Egypt and Ethiopia, because of its vocal and emotional demands. But she took up the role in concert in 2022, with Detroit Opera, then onstage in 2023 with the Royal Opera in London.
At the Met, she said, she finally felt comfortable in the role. “This is home for me,” she said of the house. “It’s been amazing, it’s been stressful, it’s been unreal. And it has also been solidifying.”
Michael Mayer, the director of “Aida,” said that Blue was critical to creating a sense of intimacy in his staging, and that she showed an “extraordinary sympathy” with her role.
“You just feel it so strongly,” he said. “It has been beautiful to watch how deeply she connects with the character, and how beautifully transparent she is emotionally.”
Growing up in California, Blue was surrounded by music. Her father, a pastor, sang gospel and led church choirs, and her mother played piano. She heard opera for the first time when her parents took her to hear Puccini’s “Turandot” in concert in Cleveland, when she was 4. She was fascinated, telling her parents that she wanted to be the “woman in the light”: the singer she saw onstage.
Blue’s father predicted that she would follow in the footsteps of the pioneering soprano Leontyne Price. He began giving her voice lessons when she was 6, and she started performing when she was 10. She won admission to the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, and spent four hours a day commuting to classes.
Still, she was not sure whether she could become a professional singer. In college, to help pay her tuition, she started modeling and took part in several beauty pageants. (In the talent segment of the 2006 Miss California competition, she sang “Sempre libera” from Verdi’s “La Traviata,” dedicating her performance to her father.)
After college, she studied with the conductor Zubin Mehta and others. But she had trouble winning auditions, receiving many rejection letters.
“It was hurtful,” she said. “Despondency is what I felt. I felt like an idiot.”
She told herself that if she could not land an engagement in six months, she would quit. Then, in 2013, she got a break when the English National Opera in London hired her to sing Musetta in Puccini’s “La Bohème.” Soon, she had invitations to audition at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Royal in London and the Met in New York.
Blue became a regular at the Met, performing in operas including “Turandot,” Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and the Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess,” which won a Grammy Award for best opera recording.
Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said that he expects Blue would remain a major presence at the Met. Already, he added, she has “made a mark as one of the great Aidas of our time.”
In “Aida,” Blue said, she saw a kindred spirit: a strong woman willing to fight for her dignity. Still, her view of the character changed over time.
“I see Aida no longer just as a princess or a warrior,” she said, “but as a woman filled with the utmost dignity and charisma and humility.”
Even though Blue has a global career, she does not feel like the “woman in the light” that she saw with her parents as a child.
“I want to keep going,” she said. “I don’t want to ever think, ‘I’ve made it, that’s good enough.’ There’s always something more.”
Before each performance, Blue strikes a power pose — hands on her hips — for about two minutes, to make sure her sternum is raised. Then she recites a verse from the Bible, usually Philippians 4:13, which says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” She typically calls her mother, sister or husband before going onstage.
During “Aida” performances, she often thinks about her father, who died from complications from diabetes at 66, including during the aria “O patria mia,” in which her character laments the loss of her country.
“We all have tragedy in our lives; everyone has something that they lost,” she said. “Through music we can confront that loss, and begin to see the world anew.”
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