Jennifer Goode Cooper is a “lustrous soprano” (Wall Street Journal) with “steely eyed ferocity” (NY Times) who “fills the theater with her soaring soprano voice” (Variety). She specializes in crossing genres, as shown in a career fusing opera, Broadway, song, radio, and new works. She can be heard in recording on Albany Records, MSR Classics, and SKG Music.
Although she has a love for traditional roles such as Rosalinda, Micaela, Elvira, and Musetta (Baz Luhrmann's Broadway production), Jennifer has a passion for more contemporary repertoire and new works. She premiered the roles of Titania/Hippolyta in the first known a cappella opera, Michael Ching’s A Midsummer Night's Dream. She originated Stookey/Dye's Ivonne, which was later reprised at Opera America's New Works Sampler at Wolf Trap~ and has sung Older Alice in Glory Denied in several different US companies. It was her great joy to sing the title role of Susannah at Toledo Opera, with direction by her husband Sean. When not performing opera, Jennifer has sung cabarets at the Firebird Café in NYC, concerts at Carnegie Hall, backup for Patti LuPone, and benefits for Neil Diamond, Jerry Herman, and Alan Menken. You may have heard Jennifer on NY's Power 105.1 weekly Hip Hopera segment, where she sang opera parodies of hip-hop hits with celebrity DJs Ed Lover and Doctor Dre.
Among several awards, she won the grand prize at the Lotte Lenya Theater Singing Competition, and later an additional Professional Development Grant from the Kurt Weill Foundation. She was selected to officially represent the United States as a Cultural Arts Envoy to Mozambique, where she sang with native performers in a creative retelling of Bernstein's West Side Story.
Suggested Rep: Donna Anna, Fiordiligi, Countess, Micaela, Marschallin, Arabella, Louise, Ellen Orford, Female Chorus, Miss Jessel, Magda Sorel, Governess, Mimi, Musetta, Violetta. Crossover: Kate (Kiss Me, Kate), Mary Magdalene (JC Superstar), Anna (King and I), Babe (PJ Game), Julie Jordan (Carousel), Fiona (Brigadoon), Eliza (My Fair Lady), Lily (Secret Garden).
In 2017-19 Jennifer was the resident lyric soprano at American Opera Project's Composers & the Voice workshop in Brooklyn, and she also sang with the Metropolitan Opera Guild in various pre-broadcast lecture performances.
Jennifer lives outside NYC with her husband, director/actor/writer Sean Cooper, their three children, and their hairless cat Bruce.
