JOE STROPPEL, lyric tenor, was born and raised in Glen Cove, NY. His father, Frederick Stroppel, is a playwright, screenwriter and opera enthusiast, and his mother, Liz, is an early childhood music educator. His late grandmother, Betty Kash, was a cabaret singer & theatre director in New York City.

 

Joe was making loud noises fresh out of the womb, but he started taking voice lessons at the age of twelve. His first major theatrical experience was a regional teen production of Les Misérables - in which he played the lead role of Jean Valjean - and he's been performing ever since.

 

Joe currently studies music at Hunter College in New York City. He spent over three years of his undergrad as an assistant to accomplished conductor Michael Sheetz. Joe is a two-time Emile Anders award winner for vocal excellence in Dr. Sheetz's collegiate ensembles, and he was a 2024 winner of the Hunter Symphony Orchestra's Aria Competition. He is also a choral scholar at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Sea Cliff, Long Island. Joe is a voice student of Tony® nominated singer Ron Raines.

 

Joe's solo work in oratorio includes performances of Bach’s Magnificat and Actus Tragicus, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Requiem, Vivaldi’s Magnificat and Brahms’ Neue Liebeslieder. He sang the tragic title role in Carissimi’s Jephte, and he performed with the American Opera Project in the world premiere of Precipice. In May 2024, Joe portrayed the villainous Brahmasura in Mohini - another world premiere - during the Hunter College Pocket Opera festival. That summer, Joe traveled to the International Summer Opera Festival of Morelia in Mexico, where he sang Remendado in Bizet’s Carmen. Joe performed as Miss Trunchbull in MATILDA: The Musical at the Jeanne Rimsky Theater in March 2025. Over the summer of 2025, he sang as Orpheus in Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, and he understudied the role of Tobias in Opera Maine's production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.

 

Joe will hold his graduation recital at Lang Recital Hall, Hunter College in November of 2025, and he'll sing a role in The Secret Melody, a new opera by Luc Baiwir & Susan Gonzalez, which will be workshopped by Hunter Opera Theater at the end of the year. Joe is also scheduled to sing as a soloist in his first St. Matthew Passion (J.S. Bach) at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, NYC on Palm Sunday 2026.

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Joe's solo act, available for booking around Long Island / & the greater NYC region, explores his interest in musical theatre with an emphasis on Golden Age Broadway and early to mid-20th century popular music.