Traverse City singer completes first season with the Metropolitan Opera
Traverse City native Katherine DeYoung has finished her first Met Opera season, a path that began at the State Theatre and ran through Interlochen, MSU and Houston.
Katherine DeYoung has finished her first season as a chorus member with the Metropolitan Opera, bringing a Traverse City voice onto one of the country’s most prominent stages. The Met identifies DeYoung as a mezzo-soprano from Traverse City, and its chorus roster lists her as a current member.
Her route to New York started close to home. DeYoung said her interest in opera was sparked when she saw a Met Opera HD broadcast of Les Contes d’Hoffmann, also known as The Tales of Hoffmann, at Traverse City’s State Theatre while she was a sophomore in high school. That theater, at 233 E. Front St., is operated by the Traverse City Film Festival, which revived the building in 2007 as a year-round arthouse cinema after it had been closed since the early 1990s. The renovated theater has 440 seats, a local reminder of how a single venue can shape what young performers imagine for themselves.
DeYoung’s training also ran through several Northern Michigan institutions before it widened nationally. She sang in the NMC Children’s Choirs, graduated from St. Francis High School, spent a summer at Interlochen Arts Camp and studied voice at Michigan State University and the University of Houston. She also studied with Jayne Sleder in Traverse City, a detail that underscores how much of her early development happened before she ever reached a major opera house.
Her professional résumé widened in steps after college. DeYoung took part in the Santa Fe Opera’s Apprentice Singer program in 2018 and 2019, then joined the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center. The Lyric described her as a third-year Ryan Opera Center mezzo-soprano and a native of Traverse City, and listed prior credits at the Detroit Opera Studio and the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Singer program.
At the Met, DeYoung appeared during the 2024/25 season as Unborn #6 and covered Unborn #5 in Die Frau ohne Schatten. The Met’s artist page says this was her debut season, and the company’s Live in HD series, launched in December 2006, now reaches theaters around the world. For Grand Traverse County, DeYoung’s career traces a clear line from local choir rooms and a downtown movie palace to the orchestra pit and chorus ranks at the Metropolitan Opera.
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