Bolivian Soprano, Shelén Hughes has a passion for social service and music in life. Raised in the city of Cochabamba, she grew up performing as a Bolivian folklore singer and dancer. Ms. Hughes is a second year ADOS artist at The Juilliard School where she will be performing the role of Servillia (La Clemenza di Tito, Mozart) this season. Future engagements include her debut at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York City singing the role of Private Sonia Gonzales in Huang Ruo’s An American Soldier and the soprano soloist in Bacchus et Ariane (Rieti) with Cantori New York.

 

She is a first place winner of a division of the 2024 Gerda Lissner Competition and first place winner of the 2024 Dorothy Lincoln Smith Vocal Competition D.C chapter. She was a semi finalist at the Alfredo Kraus Competition (2023) in Gran Canaria, the Sankofta Award Recipient of the SAS competition (2023) and a soloist in a curated program “Gracias a la Vida” with the New York Festival of Song.

Previous credits include Atalanta from Handel’s Atalanta, Inez from Mercadante’s I Due Figaro (Manhattan School of Music), Snegurochka from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Snegurochka (Manhattan School of Music), Micaëla in Bizet’s Carmen, Magda in Puccini’s La Rondine, her Carnegie Hall debut in 2019 and her NYFOS debut in 2022. Ms. Hughes completed her BM & MM degrees at the Manhattan School of Music, she was a young artist at the 2019 Gstaad Menuhin Festival and a 2022 Gerdine Young Artist at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis performing the role of Frasquita in Bizet’s Carmen and Ms. Kohl in the premiere Awakenings.  

Ms. Hughes is the founder of “Voices for Bolivia”, a growing international non-profit organization for those in need in Bolivia, fully funded by classical music.