New York based singer, performance poet, and writer Rocky Duval (she/he) has been performing professionally since the age of 11 and has appeared in opera, television, stage, concert, off-Broadway, and the TEDx stage.

Ms. Duval specializes in singing baroque and contemporary classical music, and has performed with many companies, including: The Metropolitan Opera Guild, The Glimmerglass Festival, Festival Bach Montreal, Frequent Flyers Aerial Dance, The Colorado Music Festival, The Seattle Symphony, Opera Steamboat, Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, Amherst Early Music, among many others.

Her debut album of baroque arias, Treacherous Fate and the accompanying music video for Dido’s Lament were described as “absolutely beautiful, vocally and visually” (Deviant Opera), and she won first prize in Japan’s Ise-Shima singing competition (2022).

Her first play, Hildegard, Reborn, about St. Hildegard von Bingen premiered to a sold out house at Lincoln Center and was sponsored by the NYPL-Library for the Performing Arts spring of 2024. Rocky arranged Hildegard’s music for the show, as well as composed new pieces based on Hildegard’s style and texts.

She has performed at a wide range of venues internationally including, The Apollo Theatre, The High Line, on Spanish National Television (La1), CBGB, WQXR’s The Green Space, Opera America, Monestir Pedralbes Barcelona, Schauspielhaus Bochum, The English Theatre Frankfurt, as well as on ARTE television, Germany. Her voice has been featured in a wide variety of media including McDonald’s commercials, Experiments in Opera’s podcast Aqua Net & Funyuns, and the opera film Freydis & Gudrid (imdb).

Rocky is also a public speaking and presentation skills coach, and is a guest professor of communications at Cooper Union School of Engineering, and has been a guest lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, Juilliard, McNeese University, and Riverdale Country School. She produces plays, concerts, and bespoke events for corporations, arts organizations and schools. Playground Opera, the children’s opera series she produced from 2019-2023 was nominated twice for Opera America’s prestigious Opera Innovation awards. She holds a Bachelors of Music from the University of Washington, and a diploma in coaching from NYU. She is currently working on a certificate in medieval music at the University of Lleida in Spain.