About Voce Moderna
Voce Moderna is a new resource to help connect singers with contemporary opera arias. It is intended to showcase and promote the work of living composers, and focuses on works written since 2000.
Composers and publishers are collaborators at Voce Moderna, and they receive royalties from track purchases. Mechanical licenses have been obtained so that these practice tracks could be made available for your personal use.
This database is ongoing! Arias will continue to be added to this site, so be sure to keep checking back for new entries.
The People Behind VM
Blair Salter
Collaborative pianist Blair Salter is a versatile performer and music director who has worked at prestigious opera companies and young artist programs throughout the United States and Canada. A graduate of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, San Francisco Opera’s Merola Young Artist Program, Wolf Trap Opera, and the Glimmerglass Festival, Blair is currently Head Coach for the LA Opera Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program and a member of the music staff at Wolf Trap Opera. She made her conducting debuts at Lyric Opera of Kansas City and Pacific Opera Project in 2025, she was a conductor at The Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors in 2023, and she was Music Director for Opera Theatre at Penn State University from 2021-23.
Blair has worked as a member of music staff at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Colorado, Michigan Opera Theatre, New Orleans Opera, and the CoOPERAtive Program. Her extensive recital credits include a program of music curated for the HGO Recital Series at Rienzi, which featured a commissioned set of songs by Jamie Leidwinger. Other performances include recitals with Cincinnati Song Initiative, a mini-recital for the Sam Houston State University Art Song Festival with frequent collaborator Amy Petrongelli, a residency on Performance Today with tubist Cristina Cutts, and her debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., accompanying students from the University of Michigan. She has participated in and performed at multiple conferences, including: the New Works Forum at Opera America in New York City, the African American Song Alliance Conference in Irvine, California, the Song of America Conference in partnership with the Hampsong Foundation’s Song in Dialogue, and at the NATS National Conference in Las Vegas.
An advocate of contemporary music, Blair is the creator of the aria database Voce Moderna. She has appeared in residency at the Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar, and with the Khemia Ensemble at Michigan State University, Tufts University and the Avaloch Farms Music Institute. She has also worked on several operatic world premieres, including The Righteous, M. Butterly, Lord of Cries, and The Thirteenth Child at Santa Fe Opera, and The Phoenix and El Milagro del Recuerdo at Houston Grand Opera.
Blair attended the University of Western Ontario for her Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance and Master of Music degree in collaborative piano, studying with John Hess and Stéphan Sylvestre. She completed her DMA in Collaborative Piano at the University of Michigan, where she studied with Martin Katz.
Jeff Dalley
A software developer by day (and sometimes by night), Jeff enjoys configuration files, build pipelines, deleting code, setting up the perfect dev environment full of tools and time savers, and leaving things better than he found them. He's still wondering if he'll find a niche, or just continue to dabble broadly, but he's enjoying himself either way.
Jeff spends a lot of time poring over what's new and changing in software development. He follows a number of communities and the folks that participate in them; he enjoys drawing inspiration from seeing what other people are building, how they solve problems, and how sharing one's work positively impacts others. He aspires to communicate and share in this same supportive way.
Outside of software, he's a huge fan of: technology in general, speccing and building PCs, fantasy/sci-fi books, gaming, and hanging out with his wife (Blair!) and their dog Hermes.
Katrina Cole
Soprano Katrina Cole is a recent graduate of the University of Memphis where she earned her Masters of Music with Dr. Paulina Villarreal. Ms. Cole also holds a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from The Pennsylvania State University where she studied with Dr. Rachel Copeland. Recently, Ms. Cole was Rosabella in The Most Happy Fella and Hannchen in Der Vetter aus Dingsda with the University of Memphis Opera, Second Spirit in Die Zauberflöte with the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, and Blanche de la Force in Dialogues of the Carmelites with Penn State Opera Theatre.
Ms. Cole found a true passion and excitement for new and contemporary works, both in opera and art song, during her undergraduate studies. She has worked with notable composers Tom Cipullo and Melissa Dunphy on some of their pieces, and was honored to perform the world premiere of Nyokabi Kariuki's Veils. Ms. Cole has been Voce Moderna's artistic assistant since 2023; she manages everything from data collection to running social media platforms, to working and communicating with composers about highlighting their works in the Voce Moderna database.
Hermes
Hermes took the Salter-Dalley household by fuzzy force in January 2025. He is the official mascot and boss of the Voce Moderna team.
Likes include: fetch, morning walks, playing in pillows, pupcups, reminding you that he is 1% mastiff.
Dislikes include: shadows, being left out of conversations, rain, leaves on his feet.