Making her way from the sugar beet fields of Idaho to the stage of a professional opera company — the College of Fine Arts Alumna of the Year is out to prove the genre is for everyone.
Cecilia Violetta López is the College of Fine Arts Alumna of the Year. López has performed numerous operas across North America, including playing the role of Mimì in La bohème. (Photo courtesy of Cecilia Lopez)
Cecilia Violetta López
’11 Bachelor of Music (Vocal Performance)
College of Fine Arts Alumna of the Year
Cecilia Violetta López’s intense passion for opera can be traced to a student performance she attended while pursuing her music education degree at UNLV. Sitting inside Judy Bayley Theatre on campus, López was completely mesmerized, both by the storyline of the four-act, 19th-century tragedy La bohème and by the amazing voices who brought it to life.
López will tell you, without a hint of hyperbole, that seeing that production literally changed her life. However, she’ll also tell you that she never would’ve walked into the Judy Bayley Theatre that day were it not for a lifelong love of music.
And the roots of that love can be traced to the vast sugar beet fields in Rupert, Idaho, a tiny town 160 miles southeast of Boise where López’s parents settled after immigrating from Mexico. As a child, López would join her older brother and her mother hoeing sugar beets in the non-winter months. To pass the time, her mother would sing mariachi music, and López would joyously sing along to the tunes.
Read more about Cecilia’s career journey as a first generation college student on UNLV Today: https://www.unlv.edu/news/article/singing-opera-just-strikes-chord-cecilia-violetta-lopez?utm_source=unlvtoday&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=unlvtoday-20230922
