More About Erica

Erica J Fletcher was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to a pair of very logical parents. Though both of them worked in healthcare, Erica was destined for the spotlight. As a child, Erica made their stage debut giving musical performances at family parties in feather boas and plastic dress up heels. They quickly became known for singing almost unceasingly around the house, driving both of their parents and their younger sister into near insanity. In grade school, Erica poured their heart into dance classes, piano lessons, choir, and class plays, which they were always far more excited about than their fellow first graders. 

Erica developed a rebellious streak as they got older, which translated into their performance life. In piano lessons, 10 year old Erica became bored with reading music and instead elected to pick out songs they heard on the radio during their 20 minutes of parent-mandated daily practice. They were so good at this that they had their parents convinced they were practicing what they were supposed to be practicing, only for them to be baffled when the teacher explained to them that Erica still knew none of the music they were assigned. Also around the age of 10, Erica’s dance studio put on a performance in which they were expected to dress as a caterpillar. They found this quite patronizing, feeling 10 was much too old for such a cutesy costume, and therefore decided the performance would be the finale of their dance lesson days. 

In middle school, Erica took on the role of weird choir kid, cutting basketball practice to do homework in their music teacher’s room. They took up singing lessons, which quickly became their favorite hour of the school week, and began to perform in shortened versions of Shakespeare’s plays. Erica felt at home on the stage; they didn’t care what people thought about them, as long as they could sing with the choir or hop around in fun costumes reciting verse in front of a crowd of snoozing parents. In highschool this attitude served them, theater and choir bringing them some of their closest friends to this day. They formed close bonds with their teachers and fellow classmates in the arts, all while doing what they loved most: performing. It was a no brainer that they’d pursue it in college, and after a round of musical theater program rejections they found themselves in the drama department at Hofstra University. 

It was in college that Erica began to truly find their footing and discover who they were. The drama department served hard to break into as a freshman, but the music department beckoned them, granting them a spot in the choir and leading them to a new passion: opera. Erica’s classical soprano voice sometimes had difficulty with contemporary musical theater, but in opera there was always a place for them. They were cast in the annual opera in a leading role as a freshman, playing Hermia in Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, which the Hofstra Opera Theater reworked to better fit the plot of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Erica’s passion for opera grew rapidly, and they found great joy in spending hours in practice rooms working on scenes and arias. 

Sophomore and junior year brought Erica greater success in the Hofstra drama department. They worked on shows each semester, taking on the roles of Katya in We Are Pussy Riot or Everything is P.R., Miss Neville in She Stoops to Conquer, Mrs. Stevenson in Sorry, Wrong Number, Nellie Ewell in Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke, Titania and Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Aricia in Phaedra. Their involvement in the opera theater continued as well, seeing them in the roles of Cherubino in Mozart’s Le Nozze Di Figaro and First Lady in Die Zauberflöte, and Kaylee in Michael Ching’s Speed Dating Tonight!. After graduating in spring of 2021, Erica was overjoyed to study music full time as a Master’s student at the Aaron Copland School of Music (ACSM) at Queens College, pursuing their MM in Classical Voice Performance.

At Queens College, Erica’s opera dreams would truly begin to come true. They started off strong in the fall of 2021, taking on the role of Belinda in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. They were then cast as Valencienne in ACSM’s spring production of Franz Lehar’s operetta The Merry Widow under the direction of Dorothy Danner. Over the summer of 2022, they performed Despina in Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte in a wildly fun production by director Alex Sheerin at the Queens Summer Vocal Institute. In their final year at ACSM, Erica had a blast playing Laetitia in Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief and is incredibly proud to have conquered the role of Governess in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw.

Erica refers to opera as “the love of their life”—the immense gratitude and pride they feel to be able to sing and perform such incredible music is for them a joy like no other. They do their best to bring an optimistic, inspired energy into everything they do and, if you let them, they’ll probably talk your ear off about Dungeons and Dragons. They also do cosplay and attend a few comic conventions a year, but don’t tell anyone, lest they think they’re a huge nerd. They’re totally not.