Virginia Dupuy

Virginia Dupuy, 2022-23 recipient of SMU’s highest faculty honor, the Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Award, has earned a reputation as one of the finest recital and concert singers in the United States. She has championed American music in recordings of the Grammy-nominated Voces Americanas, and she premiered the role of Crone in Conrad Susa’s opera The Wise Women. Fanfare magazine hailed her recording of Dominick Argento’s Pulitzer Prize Winner From the Diary of Virginia Woolf as one of the top classical recordings of the year.

Dupuy made her Lincoln Center debut with the American Symphony Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall and has appeared with the orchestras of Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, Eugene and Honolulu. Professor of voice at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, she is a leading scholar and interpreter of music set to Emily Dickinson’s texts. Gasparo Records, Inc. released Dwell in Possibility, a CD of 24 Dickinson poems and one letter performed by Dupuy with Shields-Collins Bray of Voices of Change set to music by her esteemed friends, including Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, Ricky Ian Gordon, Lee Hoiby, Dan Welcher, Richard Hundley, Simon Sargon and William Jordan. She continued her performances of contemporary composers with Voices of Change and the Cliburn Modern composers concerts with the composers Osvaldo Golijov, Richard Danielpour, Ricky Ian Gordon, Mark Adamo, Jennifer Higdon and William Bolcom present. She sang songs and duets, including texts of Sister Helen Prejean, with Heggie and pianist and producer Shields-Collins Bray at the Cliburn at the Modern in Fort Worth. She continues to perform Emily Dickinson in Song throughout the country.

A champion of creating musical theatre performances for SMU students, Dupuy began what has become a part of the curriculum each spring, open to any qualified student across campus. Her affection for SMU-in-Taos began as she offered the first musical theatre camps beginning in 2010. Her student, tenor Juan Jose de Leon, made his Metropolitan Opera debut in October 2013 and performs throughout the world. Other Dupuy students have recently won regional Metropolitan Opera auditions and are apprentices at the Santa Fe Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, Wolf Trap, Chautauqua, Des Moines, Opera North and the Los Angeles Opera. Dupuy is also the liaison and founder of the Emerging Artist Program, a partnership for SMU graduate students with the Dallas Opera. Dupuy is in demand throughout the United States as a teacher of master classes with a specialty in strategies for performing contemporary music. She produced a symposium prior to the opening of the opera Moby Dick by Heggie at the Winspear Opera House in partnership with the Dallas Opera, Meadows School of the Arts and the Texas Book Festival.

Dupuy is currently producing master classes for SMU with Lucas Meachem, Ian Derrer and Jessica Turner Waugh.

Dupuy performs regularly with Dallas-based Voices of Change. A champion of poetry, she has performed at Poetry at Round Top, a poetry festival in Texas; Shakespeare Club of Dallas; and has made numerous appearances in recital in Amherst, Massachusetts. Dupuy is a founder of the Children’s Chorus of Greater Dallas (now Greater Dallas Choral Society for Children and Youth) and Conspirare and has created Fine Arts Chamber Music Scholarships for piano and voice students at Carter High School in Dallas. She volunteers with Project Transformation with her spouse, Bob, in literacy advocacy with children of Dallas. She serves on the Rogene Russell Music Scholarship committee and has been a member of the Texas Book Festival board. Currently, she is a member of the educational committee of the Dallas Opera.