Bio
Wesley Dunnagan
Temple Hammen, American lyric soprano, opens her 2021-2022 season as a Resident Artist with South Bend Lyric Opera. In collaboration with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, she will be performing Annina in La Traviata in Spring 2022.
This past season, Temple prepared for the role of Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro for Mannes Opera’s Da Ponte Project in the Spring of 2021. Temple was chosen to perform select arias from St. Matthew Passion for the virtual Mannes Sounds Festival in the Fall of 2020, as well several art songs in their Spring Festival “The Emergence and Development of American Styles.” Temple also placed as a Semi-Finalist in the 2021 Orpheus Vocal Competition.
In 2020, Temple was granted a Professional Fellowship at SongFest in Los Angeles, CA and was to perform the world premier of Sheila Silver's On Trees Commission. She was going to make her Lincoln Center debut as a soloist in Steve Reich’s Tehillim, and was also scheduled to cover the role of Dafne in La Dafne at Mannes Opera. Unfortunately, these opportunities were cancelled in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Temple was the recipient of the Liebergesell Foundation Grant and invited to study in France with the Class Lyric Arts residency in 2019, where she performed scenes as Ophélie in Hamlet and Béatrice in Béatrice et Bénédict. Temple's previous performances also include Filia in Carissimi’s Jephta, Un Patré in Poulenc’s L'enfant Et Les Sortilèges, and Una Conversa in Puccini’s Suor Angelica at Westminster’s Opera Theater. While in her first year of graduate school at Mannes School of Music, she closely studied and performed scenes from the role of Zerlina in Don Giovanni, as well as Manon in Manon.
As an avid oratorio and concert soloist, Temple has been seen in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music at Spoleto Festival USA, Beethoven Choral Fantasy with Westminster Choir College, as well as Mozart’s Vesperae Solennes and Bach’s Wachet Auf with Calvary Episcopal Church in Summit, New Jersey. Temple has also performed in the first American production of Lachenmann’s The Little Match Girl at Spoleto Festival USA.
A graduate of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey where she received her B.M. in Vocal Performance, and toured and performed with the awarded Westminster Choir. Temple received her Masters of Music in Vocal Performance from Mannes School of Music in New York City. Temple is a current student of Kiera Duffy.
Temple is a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community and a mental health advocate.