Emily June Hagen is a musician, music scholar, and pedagogue born and raised in the beautiful northwoods of Wisconsin. She returns home as often as possible to garden, kayak, camp, hike, and ski with her family. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Spanish at the University of MN Duluth (UMD) on the shores of Lake Superior in 2006 with the support of the Elaine D. Walker Vocal Scholarship, the Ray E. Anderson Scholarship and the UMD National Merit Scholar program. She studied voice, piano and organ and was the 2006 recipient of the Olive Anna Tezla Award for outstanding achievement in the School of Fine Arts.
She then traveled to Izmir, Turkey as a Rotary International Scholar to study voice, opera, and foreign languages before pursuing further study in voice, solfège and opera with sopranos Blandine de St. Sauveur and Esthel Durand at the Conservatoire Régionale de Boulogne-Billancourt in Paris, France. She completed her Master of Music degree in Vocal Performance in 2009 at UMD, where she studied voice with Dr. Regina Zona and Italian language and style with Dr. Letizia Colajanni. It was during this program that she first sang with tenor and special education teacher Philip Solyntjes, who later became her husband and favorite duet partner. Dr. Hagen then studied voice, opera, solfège, and piano at the Istituto Musicale Vincenzo Bellini in Caltanissetta, Sicily in a one-year intensive program. Her favorite performances during these years included the roles of Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro and Frasquita in Carmen.
Dr. Hagen completed her PhD in Musicology with a related field in Opera at the University of North Texas in 2018. Her dissertation, “Music, Gesture and the Depiction of Affect in Venetian Opera, c. 1640-1658” (prepared under the supervision of Venetian opera specialist Dr. Hendrik Schulze), reveals connections between seventeenth-century Venetian Aristotelianism and the depiction of affect in this repertoire. Recent projects include three collaborative score editions, articles in the graduate journal Harmonia and the A-R Editions Online Music Anthology, and conference presentations in Texas, Illinois, and Australia. During her time at UNT, Dr. Hagen performed in several art song recitals and assistant directed/stage managed several UNT Opera productions, notably including the world premiere of the new edition of Claudio Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea that she helped to publish (Bärenreiter Verlag, 2016).
Dr. Hagen currently teaches graduate music history classes at the University of North Texas, recently including “Re-Evaluating Verdi” and “Unanswered Questions of the Baroque Trio Sonata.” She also produces and performs in the St. Andrew Scenes Spectacular! opera/musical theater community outreach program and teaches a full studio of exceptionally talented private voice and piano students in Southlake, TX.