Rashida Ashley: Performance at the 2026 annual Juneteenth Festival in Buffalo, NY | Arts and Culture Stage I did not set out to blend opera and soul. I set out to stop pretending they were two different people living in one voice. I'm a soprano opera singer, trained through my years at NYU, where I also completed an MFA in Creative Writing. Most people meet one half of that first, the opera, the vocal technique, the stage presence, and assume the writing came later, a separat