Emily Pogorelc hails from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She studied at at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and as a member of the Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and she has also participated in residencies at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence’s Mozart Académie and on the Britten–Pears Young Artist Programme at Snape Maltings (in conjunction with the Aldeburgh Festival). In 2018 she was the youngest finalist and recipient of The Ginette Theano Prize for Most Promising Talent at the inaugural Glyndebourne Opera Cup, and in 2021 she was a prizewinner at the Operalia Competition at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

In 2020 she joined the ensemble of the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, where her roles have included Adina (L’elisir d’amore), Musetta (La bohème), Lauretta (Gianni Schicchi), Sofia (Il signor Bruschino), Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) and Sister Constance (Dialogues des Carmélites). Other opera engagements have included Cunégonde (Candide) at Washington National Opera, Romilda (Serse), Johanna Barker (Sweeney Todd) and Berenice (L‘occasione fa il ladro) at the Glimmerglass Festival, Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro) at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and Amina (La sonnambula) at the Semperoper in Dresden.

In concert, she has appeared at the Salzburg Mozartwoche and the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Rudolfinum in Prague, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and Carnegie Hall in New York. She is also passionate about performing new works; in 2016 she made her début with Opera Philadelphia in Daniel Schnyder’s Charlie Parker’s Yardbird, singing the role of Chan Parker in the opera’s New York première, and she has sung the roles of Violetta Valéry and Norma in Marina Abramović’s 7 Deaths of Maria Callas at the Bayerisches Staatsoper and the Royal Theatre Carré in Amsterdam.