Soprano Angel Blue has gained attention domestically and internationally in 19th century operatic roles, especially that of Mimi in Puccini's La bohème, and in various roles in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Blue was a protégée of famed tenor Plácido Domingo.

Angel Joy Blue was born in Los Angeles on May 3, 1984. She attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, studying piano in addition to voice, graduating in 2005. Blue went on to the University of California at Los Angeles, where she earned a master's degree in opera performance two years later. As a young woman, Blue modeled and participated in beauty pageants. Among other awards, she was second runner-up in the Miss California pageant in 2005 and first runner-up in 2006. She also held the title of Miss Hollywood. Blue made inroads into the operatic scene as a student at the Los Angeles Opera's Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program from 2007 to 2009, and of the Artistas de la Academia del Palau de les Arts in Spain, from 2009 to 2010. By that time, she had made appearances with the San Francisco Opera as Clara in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. A breakthrough came when she was selected to tour with Domingo, who once called her the next Leontyne Price, appearing as far afield as Zagreb and Beijing in 2011.

That tour exposed Blue to opera company directors on both sides of the Atlantic, and she has gone on to appear at such major venues as the Theater an der Wien as Giulietta in the production of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann directed by The Exorcist's William Friedkin, the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland in the title role of Berg's Lulu, and the English National Opera, where she performed the role of Musetta in La bohème in 2013 and Mimi in 2014; the latter role became a specialty. That year, she released her debut album, Joy Alone, on the Opus Arte label. She also appeared stateside at the Los Angeles Opera and San Francisco Opera, and she has a long list of concert credits that includes appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle, the Israeli Philharmonic, and the Munich Philharmonic.

In 2017, Blue made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Mimi in La bohème. Two years later, she returned to the Met as Bess in the company's new production of Porgy and Bess. That performance was recorded and released in 2020, earning a Grammy Award that year for Best Opera Recording. A separate Blue Porgy and Bess highlights album, with Marin Alsop conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, appeared on the PentaTone label in 2021. ~ James Manheim, Rovi