Praised for her “big, beautifully projected voice with an attractive edge and sparkle” (Arts Knoxville), soprano Adia Evans is a second-year soprano in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center, from Baltimore, MD. In Lyric's 2024/25 Season, Evans sang Theresa Alvarez/The Listeners, Girlfriend 2/Blue, and Countess Ceprano/Rigoletto. Evans has performed with Santa Fe Opera, Merola Opera Program, Fort Worth Opera, Dallas Opera Guild, Opera Columbus, Tulsa Opera, and Knoxville Opera, among others. After participating in the 2025 Britten Pears Young Artist Programme in Aldeburgh, England, Evans appears in Lyric’s 2025/26 production of El último sueño de Frida y Diego.

In the 2023-24 Season, the soprano debuted at The Cliburn in Recital with Jake Heggie, the Dayton Philharmonic (Handel's Messiah), and Annapolis Opera (First Lady in The Magic Flute). Other recent highlights include Mimì in La Bohème with the Borderland Arts Foundation and Beethoven's 9th with the National Orchestral Institute and Marin Alsop.

Evans spent the summer of 2023 as an Apprentice Artist with Santa Fe Opera, where she covered the role of Foreign Princess in Rusalka and the titular role of Tosca. Earlier in the season, Evans played the High Priestess and covered the titular role in Aida, as well as The Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors, with Fort Worth Opera. Evans was a participant in the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco. Evans was featured as First Lady in their production of Die Zauberflöte, as a solo Niña in scenes from Golijov’s Ainadamar, and as a soloist in the American Song Concert. Her performance in the Merola Grand Finale was praised as “vivid, beautiful, and sweeping” (Opera Tattler).

A frequent recitalist and concert soloist, Evans' most recent appearance was as a soloist alongside Michael Banwarth for Classical Music Chicago's Dame Myra Hess Recital Series. Evans’s 2024/25 season included a recital in collaboration with baritone Brandon Bell, featuring the work of Toni Lester at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, as well as two recitals featured on WFMT Chicago. In previous seasons, Evans performed Mahler IV with Avanti Orchestra, covered the solos of Damien Geter’s An African American Requiem with Fort Worth Opera, featured on the 2021 PBS Special “Knox Opera for All!” with Knoxville Opera, and was a guest soloist in Tulsa Opera’s 2022 MLK Day Parade, performing a short recital of repertoire by Black composers. Evans has performed the soprano solos in Haydn’s Kleine Orgelmesse, Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de confessore, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, and Fauré’s Requiem.

A formidable vocal competitor, Evans was most recently named a 2025 Lola Fletcher Award by the American Opera Society of Chicago. In 2024, Evans was named a Winner of the Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshana Foundation, winner of the Igor Gorin Memorial Award from the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, Encouragement Award winner from the George London Foundation Competition, Tulsa District Winner, and Third Place in the Midwest Region of the 2024 Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition; she also traveled to Tbilisi, Georgia, to compete as the sole representative of the USA in the Opera Crown Competition finals with the Tbilisi State Orchestra. Evans is a recipient of the prestigious  William Matheus Sullivan Foundation Award in 2022 

 In 2023, she was awarded 2nd Place and the Soprano Prize in the George Shirley Vocal Competition, 3rd Place in the Washington International Competition, 1st Place in the Dallas Opera Guild Lonestar Vocal Competition, 3rd Place in the Midwest Region, and a winner in the Tulsa District of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition. In 2022, she won 1st Place and Audience Choice in the James Toland Vocal Competition.

Evans holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Master of Music degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as a part of the Knoxville Opera Studio. She is also a proud alumna of the Baltimore School for the Arts.