News & events

For immediate release: July 2021

Claudette Peterson

Highly Acclaimed Soprano Claudette Peterson joins our Vocal Performance faculty!

Over the course of her illustrious career, soprano Claudette Peterson has sung over 35 leading roles with major opera companies in the U.S. including The Lyric Opera of Chicago, The San Francisco Opera, Opera Company of Boston, Washington Opera, and the MUNI in St. Louis, and internationally with the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Opera du Nice and the Canadian Opera among other well-known venues.

Claudette has performed 15 leading roles during her tenure of nine years as a leading soprano with New York City Opera. She has appeared on PBS’s Gala of Stars singing “Glitter and Be Gay” with James Levine conducting the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and on Live from Lincoln Center, where she starred as Lisette in Puccini’s La Rondine. A versatile artist featured on the roster of Columbia Artists Management, Inc., Claudette collaborated with her husband, bass-baritone David Kline, in a duo recital From Opera to Broadway, which was the most popular program on the CAMI Community Concerts Series for three years in a row, eventually totaling 105 performances across the U.S. and Canada.

With over 30 years of teaching private voice lessons in a wide range of genres from Opera to Musical Theater and Pop, Claudette has sent over 100 of her students to more than 20 of the top music schools in the country including Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, Indiana University, University of Michigan, New England Conservatory, NYU, Carnegie Mellon and Cincinnati CCM. In addition, a number of her students have played leading roles on Broadway in Pippin, Hairspray, Wicked, and many national tours including Book of Mormon, Contact, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Hairspray among others, while many are singing leading roles with opera companies both in the U.S. and abroad. She has coached her high-school students in popular music, many of whom are known for their a capella groups, several in their top group “voices’ which recently ranked #1. Two of her young female students were soloists with Voices, both of whom recently appeared and sang in the film Marry Me with Jennifer Lopez.

Claudette Peterson is a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Merola Opera Program. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of OperaFest, LLC., and has produced 13 Opera Festivals, performing in Tolentino Italy, on Martha’s Vineyard and here in Ridgewood, NJ. OperaFest has also produced nine Recital Concerts at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.

We are so honored that Claudette has joined our vocal performance faculty here at The Ridgewood Conservatory!