Elise Brancheau is an arts administrator and soprano based in New Jersey who is equally at home on a production team, on the operatic stage, and in a choral group. She is the cofounder and artistic director of The Secret Opera, an opera company that seeks to utilize opera as a means to facilitate conversation and effect positive change in the community. Over the company’s first two seasons, The Secret Opera produced seventeen operatic and art song works by living composers, several of which were world or NYC premieres. She is also a board member and regular collaborator with the New Brunswick-based arts organization, coLAB Arts, with which she coproduced and performed in A Watershed Moment, an outdoor immersive and interdisciplinary work featuring the music of Hildegard von Bingen, contemporary dance, spoken word, and visual art. She also serves as coLAB Arts' Fundraising Committee Chair.
As a graduate of Westminster Choir College and Mannes College of Music, Elise's experiences as both an ensemble performer and soloist have informed her musicianship and granted her a love for a wide variety of musical repertoire. Favorite opera roles include Micaëla (Carmen), Pamina (The Magic Flute), Mimì (La bohème), and Blanche (Dialogues des Carmélites), among others. In the realm of art song and oratorio, she has enjoyed singing repertoire such as Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Britten's Les Illuminations, Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Vesperae solennes de confessore, and more, and has a particular penchant for staging art song cycles. A proponent of new music, she has premiered numerous solo works by composers such as Martha Sullivan, Dennis Tobenski, Adam Cuthbert, Melissa Dunphy, Jan Albert, and more. She has also lent her voice to the soundtracks of multiple short films with the Australian film house Rum Runner Films. She is currently the soprano section leader at St. Joseph’s Church, Yorkville in New York City, and is a chorister with the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir, which performs regularly with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nezet-Seguin.
