MY BACKGROUND

MY BIO

Costa Rican soprano Yuriria Rodríguez holds the rare privilege of being able to sing in both classical and popular styles with great professionalism and expression. Reviews have praised Ms. Rodríguez as a singer “with a beautiful voice which recalls a force of nature” (Herald Times, Bloomington, IN). As a member of El Taller, at the prestigious Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University, she had the opportunity to share the stage with prominent guest musicians and Jacobs School of Music faculty, such as Grammy Award Winners Pablo Ziegler, Pablo Aslan, Michael Spiro, Gonzalo Grau and Sylvia McNair among many others.
In 2006, she sang the role of Maria in the tango-operita by A. Piazzolla and H.Ferrer, Maria de Buenos Aires, at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, receiving a standing ovation in a sold out performance. In the classical realm, Ms. Rodríguez also sung the role of Despina in W.A. Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte (Costa Rica) and one of the three Rosales sisters in Indiana University’s collegiate premiere of Oswaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar, conducted by Carmen Helena Téllez.
Ms. Rodríguez studied voice with Mary Tortorich (Loyola University of New Orleans) and Fulvio Villalobos (Costa Rica) before coming to Indiana University, where she received a Bachelor of Music from Jacobs School of Music under the tutelage of Teresa Kubiak and Carlos Montané. In 2013 Yuriria graduated from the Master in Music program, also at Indiana University-Jacobs School of Music, where she studied with Prof. Mary Ann Hart.
She has been a winner at the National Society of Arts and Letters voice competition, in Bloomington, Indiana, and a winner of the 9th Annual Competition in the Performance of Music from Spain and Latin America, which allowed her to tour the United States as an artist sponsored by the Embassy of Spain, giving recitals of Zarzuela and Latin American/Spanish Art Song. Among other honors received while in school, she was awarded the Olimpia Barbera scholarship from the Latin American Music Center at IU to pursue studies in voice at the level of Master in Music.
Recently, Ms. Rodriguez was featured as a soloist in the University Singers performance of Mozart’s Requiem conducted by Richard Tang Yuk at Indiana University. She debuted at the Indiana Opera program as Suor Osmina in the 2011 production of Puccini’s Suor Angelica, and was casted again that summer to sing for the new opera The Tales of Lady Thi Kihn, by P. Q. Phan. In 2011 she sang the Soprano II role in Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor with the Philharmonic of Kalamazoo in the Bach Festival in Kalamazoo, MI, conducted by Prof. James Turner. Even most recently, Yuriria sang the role of Sombra, in Gabriela Ortiz’s Ana y su Sombra, commissioned by Reimagining Opera for Kids, a local Opera Company that Yuriria is proudly part of, and that performs all year round.
Currently, Yuriria splits her time between performing as a guest artist for the IU-Latin Jazz Ensemble conducted by Grammy award winners Michael Spiro and Wayne Wallace, as a choral conductor with the dynamic Coro Latinoamericano at Christ Church Cathedral, and developing a bilingual choral program for early music learners, also at Christ Church. Occasionally, she can be heard singing some Bach or Mozart, as a guest soloist for the Choir of Men and Choristers of Christ Church. Last year Yuri was called to be the sub for the role of Mimi in Costa Rica's National Lyric Opera production of La Boheme.