Geraldine McMillian is an American soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 who has had an active career in concerts and opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

s since the mid 1980s.

Career

After graduating from the Juilliard School

Juilliard School

The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...

, McMillian made her professional opera debut in 1986 at the Houston Grand Opera

Houston Grand Opera

Houston Grand Opera Houston Grand Opera was founded in 1955 through the joint efforts of Maestro Walter Herbert and cultural leaders Mrs. Louis G. Lobit, Edward Bing and Charles Cockrell...

 as Annie in George Gershwin

George Gershwin

George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...

's Porgy and Bess

Porgy and Bess

Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...

. She repeated the role for her debut with the San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...

 the following year, and in 1988 portrayed Clara in that opera for her debut with the Florentine Opera

Florentine Opera

The Florentine Opera Company is Wisconsin's oldest fully professional performing arts organization and the sixth-oldest opera company in the United States. The company presents on three staged productions per season largely from the standard operatic repertoire...

 in Milwaukee. In 1989 she sang a program of works by Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1891, the Symphony makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival...

.

McMillan's first major success was her debut performance at the New York City Opera

New York City Opera

The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...

 (NYCO) in 1990 as Mimi in Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...

's La boheme

La bohème

La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...

. Later that year she performed the role of Bess with the NYCO and was heard as Liu in Puccini's Turandot

Turandot

Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...

with the Florida Grand Opera

Florida Grand Opera

Florida Grand Opera is an American opera company based in Miami, Florida. FGO was created in 1994 from the consolidation of two opera companies in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale region:...

. In 1991 she toured to 56 North American cities with the NYCO, performing Countess Almaviva in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

's The Marriage of Figaro

The Marriage of Figaro

Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...

. Music critic John Rockwell

John Rockwell

John Rockwell is a music critic, editor, and dance critic. He studied at Phillips Academy, Harvard, the University of Munich, and the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Ph.D. in German culture....

 of The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

stated in his review that "[McMillan's] soprano, big and shining like a cross between Eleanor Steber

Eleanor Steber

Eleanor Steber was an American operatic soprano. Steber is noted as one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States.-Biography:...

 and Martina Arroyo

Martina Arroyo

Martina Arroyo is an operatic soprano of Puerto Rican and African-American descent who had a major international opera career during the 1960s through the 1980s...

, commands attention. In January 1992 she embarked on a second NYCO national tour in the title role in Puccini's Tosca

Tosca

Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...

, and in 1994 she was heard with the NYCO at their Lincoln Center home and on National tour in the title role of Puccini's Madama Butterfly

Madama Butterfly

Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...

.

In 1998 McMillan sang the title role in Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

's Aida

Aida

Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...

with the Boston Lyric Opera

Boston Lyric Opera

Boston Lyric Opera is an American opera company based in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1976.Each season, BLO produces three mainstage productions at the Citi Performing Arts Center Shubert Theatre in Boston and a fully staged, one-hour English language version of a popular opera for school...

, the Minnesota Opera

Minnesota Opera

The Minnesota Opera is a performance organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was founded in 1963 by the Walker Art Center, and is known for premiering such diverse works as Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and Frankenstein by Libby Larsen...

, and the Nashville Opera. She has since sung the Ethopian Princess with Opera Colorado

Opera Colorado

Opera Colorado is an opera company located in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1981, it presents an annual season of three to four fully staged productions...

 (2000) and Opera Omaha

Opera Omaha

Opera Omaha is an opera company in Omaha, Nebraska. It is well known for premiering Wakonda's Dream, a contemporary opera about Native Americans set in the Niobrara....

. In 2000 she sang the Monisha in Scott Joplin

Scott Joplin

Scott Joplin was an American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was later dubbed "The King of Ragtime". During his brief career, Joplin wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas...

's Treemonisha

Treemonisha

Treemonisha is an opera composed by the famed African-American ragtime composer Scott Joplin. Though it encompasses a wide range of musical styles other than ragtime, and Joplin did not refer to it as such, it is sometimes incorrectly referred to as a "ragtime opera"...

at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is a summer opera festival held in St. Louis, Missouri. Typically four operas, all sung in English, are presented each season, which runs from late May to late June. Performances are accompanied by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, which is divided into two...

, Madame Lidoine in Francis Poulenc

Francis Poulenc

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...

's Dialogues of the Carmelites

Dialogues of the Carmelites

Dialogues of the Carmelites , is an opera in three acts by Francis Poulenc. In 1953, M. Valcarenghi approached Poulenc to commission a ballet for La Scala in Milan; when Poulenc found the proposed subject uninspiring, Valcarenghi suggested instead a screenplay by Georges Bernanos, based on the...

at the Central City Opera

Central City Opera

Central City Opera is the fifth-oldest opera company in the United States, founded in 1932. Each festival is presented in the 550-seat historic Central City Opera House built in 1878 in the gold mining era town of Central City, Colorado. Pelham G...

, and Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...

at the Connecticut Opera

Connecticut Opera

Connecticut Opera was a professional, non-profit, opera company based in Hartford, Connecticut, and a member of OPERA America. The company presented three fully staged opera productions during an annual season. It was founded in 1942 under the directorship of Frank Pandolfi and was the sixth oldest...

. She returned to the Connecticut Opera to sing Liu in Turandot in 2002.