Melissa Sondhi
Soprano
Praised for her “charm” (San Francisco Chronicle-Datebook), for “time and again sing(ing) with a voice that is nothing short of wowing” (Theatre Eddys), her “remarkable dynamic range” (Operaville), her “warm and evocative” voice (Cordell Reports), and her “effortless performance” (Opera Tattler), Indian-American soprano Melissa Sondhi is an opera singer on the rise.
Melissa began the 2026-2027 season debuting the role of Lisette in La rondine in Mercury Theatre’s co-production with Pocket Opera. Here at Opera San José, Melissa will also debut the roles of Hodel in The Fiddler on the Roof and Frasquita in Carmen. During the 2025-2026 season, Melissa made her international debut singing in concerts in Tallinn, Estonia, and Busseto, Italy with Parma OperArt. She also made her Ars Minerva and role debut as Venere and Pasithea in the west coast premiere of Antonia Bembo’s Ercole Amante, as well as a return to Pocket Opera to debut the role of Mariane in Tartuffe.
In the 2023-2024 season, Melissa began her stint as the first ever inaugural Wadhwani Resident Artist, debuting the roles of
Juliette in Roméo et Juliette, Gilda in Rigoletto, and covering the role of Rosalba in Florencia en el Amazonas. She also debuted the role of Musetta in La bohème with Pocket Opera and Cinnabar Theater. In the 2024-2025 season, she returned to Opera San José for her second year as the Wadhwani Resident Artist, debuting the role of Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and singing the role of Musetta in La bohème. Other previous role engagements include Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro, Adele in Die Fledermaus, First Witch in Dido and Aeneas, Le feu and Le rossignol in L’enfant et les sortilèges, Giannetta in L’elisir d’amore, and Edith in The Pirates of Penzance.
This April, Melissa received an honorable mention at the Mimas International Opera Singer Competition in Naples, Italy. In 2025, Melissa was a semifinalist in the prestigious Loren L. Zachary competition, and in 2023, she won first place in the Adult Classical Voice category at the Los Angeles Semifinals of the Music International Grand Prix competition. Other competition accolades include being a semifinalist in the Orpheus Vocal Competition and a finalist at the East Bay Opera League’s Young Artists Scholarship Awards Competition.
Melissa holds a BM from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance (2015), and an MM from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (2017).
If you are interested in supporting or sponsoring an Artist-in-Residence, please reach out to our major gifts officer Julia Denny at denny@operasj.org