Biography

A committed performer with a unique voice, Brenda Iglesias excels in concert, operatic, and recital repertoire. She has been a soloist and an invited artist with notable companies and orchestras around the United States and her native Mexico including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Opera, Opera Fusion: New Works, Orquesta Sinfónica Carlos Chávez, Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México and Orquesta Sinfónica de la UAEH. Her performances have resonated in prominent venues such as the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Teatro Degollado, Prague’s Liechtenstein Palace and Estates Theater, and Cincinnati Music Hall. She has collaborated with several distinguished conductors, including Louis Langrée, James Burton, José Luis Castillo, and Eduardo García Barrios.

Iglesias' wide-ranging repertoire encompasses the principal Contralto and Mezzo-Soprano roles of the oratorio and concert repertoire, from the Baroque through the Classical and Romantic periods, as well as 20th-century music. Concert performance highlights include the solos in Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, de Falla's El Amor Brujo, Mozart's Requiem, Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus, and Bach’s St. John Passion. Operatic credits include Sesto in La Clemenza di Tito, Third Lady in Die Zauberflöte, Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica, and Maman, La bergère and La chouette in L'enfant et les sortilèges. An enthusiast of new music, she was part of the world premiere recording of Blind Injustice and workshoped the role of Dr. Muriel Elsie Landeau in Tobias Picker’s Awakenings as part of the program “Opera Fusion: New Works" with Cincinnati Opera.

A prize-winner of the renowned “Carlo Morelli” National Singing Competition at the Opera of Bellas Artes in Mexico and the Alltech Vocal Scholarship Competition in Kentucky, Iglesias was recently a semifinalist at the Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition in NYC. She has also received several scholarships and grants, including Mexico’s prestigious FONCA (National Endowment for the Arts, 2017-19), SNFM (National System of Musical Development, 2014-17), Pro-Ópera A.C (2017), and Full Merit Scholarships for both her master’s and doctoral studies at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree with honors from Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo and spent a year as an exchange student at the School of Music of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Passionate about art song, Iglesias has participated in festivals such as the Source Song Festival in Minneapolis and the Summer of Song hosted by the Art Song Preservation Society of New York. A fierce advocate for Latin American art song, she consistently incorporates underrepresented works in her recitals, with a particular focus on compositions by Mexican and Argentine composers. Recently, she presented a lecture-recital on the origins of Mexican art song at the 50th Conference of the Society for American Music in Detroit and has been selected to reprise it at the International Congress of Voice Teachers in Toronto in August 2025.

Iglesias is also a dedicated educator, widely sought after as a voice teacher, Spanish coach, and clinician. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Voice at Binghamton University-State University of New York. Previously, she served as a Lecturer and C.T. Vivian Scholar at Western Illinois University, where she taught applied voice, vocal pedagogy, and directed the Opera Workshop, premiering an English adaptation of Viardot's opera Le Dernier Sorcière. Iglesias has delivered lectures and led masterclasses at several institutions, including the Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA) in Buenos Aires, the Classical Singer Convention (CSC), Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, and Purdue University.

Iglesias’s career has been shaped by the influence of many esteemed soloists, educators, and musicians, including Thomas Baresel, Cynthia Lawrence, Kathleen Kelly, Kenneth Griffiths, Carlos Aransay, Janice Chapman, Kenneth Bozeman, and Horacio Franco.

When Brenda isn't pouring her heart into singing, she's experimenting with plant-based recipes, picking up new languages, hitting the gym, or enjoying time with her Argentine husband as they playfully navigate the differences in accent, pronunciation, and the colorful expressions of each other's Spanish.