Getting to Know Fort Worth Opera's Resident Artists

These four RA’s from various backgrounds talk about the one thing that binds them together in spirit – music.

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Four exceptional vocalists from regions that span the globe, are in the midst of a mentorship program that’s been hosted by the Fort Worth Opera since 2015. Established with a grant from the Hattie Mae Lesley Foundation, the Resident Artist (RA) Program offers professional training and experience for a chosen few annually through the Fort Worth Opera.  

This year, the four vocalists selected include a soprano, a mezzo-soprano, a tenor, and a bass baritone. These four up-and-comers are already following the lead of Fort Worth Opera’s new director of education and community engagement, Anthony Pound. In his new role, Pound’s responsibilities include the planning and overseeing of the activities of the RA’s, as well as exuding the merits of opera to potentially new audiences far and wide.  

Besides Pound, the RA’s will be mentored by seasoned professionals in Fort Worth Opera’s mainstage productions throughout the program year. This year those productions include performances of “Little Women,” and “La Cenerentola.”  

While these four RA’s may be getting mentorship from some pros, they themselves also serve as mentors to I.M. Terrell High School students who are in the process of rehearsals for their own performance “The Elixir of Love” to run in January of 2025.  

The RA’s are also set to sing at community, donor, and social events throughout the year. Besides being involved behind the scenes at several productions, these vocal musicians will receive lessons, coaching, and attend masterclasses with experts precisely picked to help them develop their musical skills.  

The four vocalists selected for the 2024-25 season are: 

Hannah Madeleine Goodman (soprano) 

Goodman comes to Fort Worth via the large metropolitan areas of New York City, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon. Goodman has a background that includes performances with Los Angeles Opera and Portland Opera. She garnered a semifinalist position in the 2023 Camille Coloratura Awards, an invitation to the iSING! Young Artists Festival in China, and had a guest star appearance on Fox’s “Glee.” 

“I had a music director who pulled me and my parents aside when I was a kid who was like, ‘Hannah's kind of loud for musical theater. We can't mic her. Have you considered opera?’ And I started taking private lessons. I went to the library, got every Kathleen Battle CD that they had, and was very drawn to the coloratura, the fast-moving passages and loved the sound. So, I pretty definitively told my parents, by the time I was in high school, I was going to be an opera singer. That was the plan. 

“I kind of built up a regional professional career doing all of it. Musical theater, TV, film, opera, classical concert work, which is a really unusual path for an opera singer. I didn't do a grad degree. I kind of wandered for a bit until I worked up enough professional experience that I auditioned for Fort Worth Opera, and they did not take me, but I applied a couple more times and now I'm here and I'm thrilled to be here.”  

What is your impression of Fort Worth so far? 

“It's just been absolutely wonderful with all these folks. And I am loving Fort Worth. I live in New York City, I've been in New York for seven years, and I don't love visiting cities that feel like maybe it's trying to be New York, or I see all the chains that I have in New York that originated there. I love being in Fort Worth. It has its own identity. It doesn't feel at all like that. It has such a strong sense of the city of heritage and wants to be like a distinct Americana culture. And that's a lot of fun for me. I really love that.” 

Mariam Mouawad (mezzo-soprano)

Originally from Zahlé, Lebanon, Mouawad began her singing career in the Middle Eastern style, then moved to San Diego as a teenager, where she exceled in the Western classical style as well. A graduate of the University of Houston’s Master of Music in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy program, Mouawad recently completed a program with Music Academy of the West where she sang the title role in "L’enfant et les sortilèges" and won the Marilyn Horne Song Competition. 

“I grew up in a musical family in Lebanon. My dad was a choir director at the church and my mom was a singer, and my brothers and I were put in the conservatory for piano at eight.  

“My musical journey classically started with just piano, but I was singing in the Middle Eastern style. Then my family and I moved to the U.S. when I was 13 and that's when I started doing musical theater in high school and choir. And then I learned about the fact that you can major in opera, and I went to San Diego State and I got my bachelor's there for vocal performance. And then I went to the University of Houston for my master's in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy.  

“I'm also interested in teaching and last year I did my first residency. It was at Shreveport Opera and that was also just similar to here where we're resident artists with the Fort Worth Opera.”  

What is your impression of Fort Worth so far? 

“It's eclectic love. Texas in general is huge. You can go from a place to another and then they can be completely different. And Fort Worth, it's kind of a smaller scale than the Houston vibe, but it also is very diverse. The food scene, I don't know. I'm still getting to know it.” 

Ndumiso Nyoka (tenor)

 A Ladysmith, South African native, Nyoka completed his Performer’s Diploma and MA in Voice from Southern Methodist University (SMU), his Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Oklahoma, and his Artist Diploma at TCU. He has previously performed with both Dallas Opera and Fort Worth Opera and was honored to sing at the funeral for former South African President Nelson Mandela. 

“Growing up in the dusty streets of South Africa, I needed to make a choice. Either I join a gang, and I follow my friends doing drugs and all kinds of crazy stuff, or I do music. And I was fortunate enough that my high school teacher had a choir and she was like, ‘Okay, you have a very high voice. I guess you can try choir.’ I didn't like it. 

"I would jump the fence, go home while I'm washing my shirt at home, and she would pull up and be like, ‘Ah, yeah, we're going back to school.’ So, I'd hop in her car, drive back to school, and we sang. I then started singing in the choir I'm going to be honest, I didn't like it. But then in 10th grade, I entered a competition. It was called South African Post Office Choral Music, and I won some money there.  

“Then I was like, oh, okay, I guess I can make a living out of this, let me give it a try. So I gave it a try. And then from there I went to college.  And then I was fortunate enough to be scouted by a professor who was from here but teaches at SMU, professor Barbara Hill Moore. She has an SMU in South Africa program where she takes SMU students to South Africa to produce a musical. She happened to be producing ‘South Pacific,’ ‘West Side Story,’ and ‘Carousel.’ I was fortunate enough to be part of those and she was like, do you want to go study in America? I said, sure.” 

What is your impression of Fort Worth so far? 

“At first when I got here, I couldn't eat. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't sleep. I was like, what kind of a country is this? It was humid. The food would give me acid reflux. It still does, but people are nice, especially here in Fort Worth. People are nice, they're friendly, they're accommodative, they're just respectful, and it's very, very diverse.” 

Seth-Emmanuel Clarke (bass-baritone)

Dallas resident Clarke recently completed a Voice Performance Diploma and received an MA from SMU. He performed as Figaro in Mozart’s "Le Nozze di Figaro" at the 2024 Hart Institute Conductors Showcase and proudly boasts three seasons as an Education Artist at The Dallas Opera. 

“I think it was maybe middle school when I started to really have some real aspirations to be a singer, and that was the first time. That was also the first time I competed in anything. I had never competed in any sort of musical competitions, anything like that. So I remember in seventh grade, the first time that I competed for the regional choir competition, and I won a first chair kind of medal thing, and that was probably the first time that I knew that I really had something that I could work with, something that could lead to me really having a future in music. And it continued on into high school and now.” 

We know you’re from Dallas, so be honest, what’s your POV of Fort Worth?  

“It is definitely very different from Dallas. I mean, I was in Highland Park, so there were only ever tall buildings and stuff. That's all I saw on a regular basis. I didn't spend much time in the suburban areas of Dallas. So now being in an area more like that in Fort Worth, it just looks totally different to me. But I'm a big food guy. I love food, and we found some pretty good food places in Fort Worth so far.”  

To learn more about community outreach at the Fort Worth Opera and the Hattie Mae Lesley Resident Artist program, or to purchase available single tickets or season ticket packages for the 2024-25 season, please visit the Fort Worth Opera website at fwopera.org.