Soprano - Artist - Activist

Tracy Cox is an award-winning opera singer and celebrated fat artist + activist. She has sung with the Metropolitan Opera, L.A. Opera, the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, Teatro Filarmonico di Verona, the Györ Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Cincinnati Symphony. In 2022, she originated the role of “Helen” in the notable new chamber opera “Fat Pig” by composer Matt Boehler and librettist Miriam Gordon-Stewart, based on the play by Neil LaBute. The opera premiered at Victory Hall Opera in Charlottesville, VA, with legendary conductor Kathleen Kelly at the helm.

Tracy’s mission as an artist is to highlight and empower fat talent, as she believes that the body-based stigma and discrimination that is normalized in the performing arts traumatizes artists and drives them from the field — hurting both the artist and the industry. She has been repeatedly interviewed by the New York Times on fat politics, as well as Opera News, Bitch Media, and the podcasts “Disruptive Stages”, “The Opera Pod”, and “Fat Outta Hell”.

Tracy is a popular arts advocacy panelist, and has presented her Body Justice Workshop — breaking down the science and impact of weight stigma in the arts — around the world at opera companies, young artist programs, and universities including the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart, Long Beach Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, and the M Institute for the Arts in Washington D.C.

Tracy is also an in-demand visual artist of many mediums including illustration, jewelry and costume design, and paper-marbling. She enjoys using all of her talents to express and amplify the nuances of the fat experience. Her most recent project, handmade ‘zine, “Fat Vanity”, features her writing, watercolors, and mixed-media art, and will soon be available for purchase as an e-book as well as limited art prints.

Tracy holds a BA and MM from UCLA, and completed fellowships with LA Opera’s Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program, Caramoor, Ravinia-Steans, Wolf Trap Opera, the Miami Music Festival Wagner Institute, and the Music Academy of the West. Tracy has been recognized by the highest echelons of the industry, garnering her a Sullivan Foundation Award, the Birgit Nilsson Prize at Operalia and the Kirsten Flagstad Award from the George London Foundation. Tracy was a Grand Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions, and the 2012 winner of the Music Academy of the West’s Marilyn Horne Song Competition.