New Zealand soprano Madison Nonoa holds a Masters degree from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she studied under the tutelage of Yvonne Kenny. Since graduating in 2019, Madison made her debut at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera as First Siren in Handel’s Rinaldo and was selected as a 2020/2021 Jerwood Young Artist. She was named a Samling Artist in 2020, a Britten-Pears Young Artist for 2021/2022, and is a former Dame Malvina Major Emerging Young Artist with New Zealand Opera, where she made her debut as Papagena in Die Zauberflöte.
Career highlights for Madison Nonoa have included her role debut as Zerlina in Don Giovanni under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle at the 2025 Aix-en-Provence Festival, her debut at the Salzburg Festival as Amore in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice in a Christof Loy production alongside Cecilia Bartoli and Gianluca Capuano, and Amour in Orphée et Eurydice with Raphaël Pichon and the Ensemble Pygmalion for the Pulsations Festival in Bordeaux.
Other recent operatic engagements embrace Galatea in Acis and Galatea with David Bates and Pleasure in The Choice of Hercules, both for the London Handel Festival, Amor in (m)Orpheus, a re-orchestration by New Zealand composer Gareth Farr of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice with the New Zealand Opera, and her house and role debut as Una Voce dal Cielo in a new Massimo Zanetti/Davide Livermoore production of Verdi’s Don Carlo for the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.
For the Opéra du Rhin, she was invited to sing the roles of Maria in a Barrie Kosky staging of West Side Story and Galatea in Porpora’s Polifemo under Emmanuelle Haïm.
Madison is featured on “#LetsBaRock” alongside Jakub Józef Orliński (Erato) and on “The Call – Introducing the Next Generation of Classical Singers” (Stone Records). She also appears as soprano soloist on the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s Christmas album “Noël! Noël! Live in Concert” (ABC Classic).
The 2025/2026 season opened with Madison featuring as Violet in woman.life.song by Judith Weir for the Birmingham Opera Company. She also performed Rossini’s Stabat Mater for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Mozart’s Requiem for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Mark Wigglesworth and returned to Amore in Orfeo ed Euridice under Gianluca Capuano at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. Later in the season, she made her Pinchgut Opera debut as Abel in the Australian premiere of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il primo omicidio.
Madison Nonoa acknowledges the ongoing support of the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Dame Malvina Major.
