You remember the moment. It was 2019, the finals of America’s Got Talent: The Champions. A 14-year-old girl stands on stage with a rabbit puppet named Petunia. Suddenly, a swell of Italian opera fills the room. It wasn't just good for a kid. It was technically staggering.
Darci Lynne singing opera basically broke the internet that night. But if you think she just showed up and "did a voice," you’re missing the actual story of what happened behind the scenes. Honestly, the level of difficulty here is kind of terrifying when you break it down.
She didn't just sing. She sang Giacomo Puccini’s "O Mio Babbino Caro" while keeping her lips perfectly still. Most professional opera singers spend a lifetime learning how to shape their mouths to hit those high notes. Darci did it with her mouth closed.
The Wild Card Risk That Paid Off
Most people forget that Darci Lynne was actually eliminated earlier in the Champions season. She didn't get enough votes from the "superfans" and was sent home. It was a shocker.
Then came the wild card. Simon Cowell and the producers brought her back for the finale, and she knew she had to do something that wasn't just "cute ventriloquism." She needed a nuke. That nuke was Italian opera.
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Why Opera?
Ventriloquism is hard. Singing is harder. Singing opera as a ventriloquist is a technical nightmare.
- Vowel Shaping: Opera relies on open, resonant vowels ($A$, $E$, $I$, $O$, $U$). A ventriloquist has to create those sounds using only their throat and tongue position.
- The "Rabbit" Factor: She wasn't singing in her own voice. She was singing in Petunia’s voice—a higher, more nasal character voice—which makes the breath control even more insane.
- Pressure: This was a live finale. If her lip twitched once, the illusion would shatter on a global stage.
She later revealed in a Reddit AMA that she actually wanted to sing opera for her original audition back in 2017. But she wasn't ready. The technique wasn't there yet. She waited two full years to debut those "secret" opera skills.
The Technical Reality: How Does She Do It?
Let's talk about the mechanics. When you see Darci Lynne singing opera, you’re watching a masterclass in muscle isolation. To hit the high notes in "O Mio Babbino Caro," she has to generate massive air pressure from her diaphragm. Usually, an opera singer uses their lips and jaw to funnel that pressure.
Darci has to keep her jaw locked.
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The sound is all internal. It’s about the soft palate. By lifting the back of her throat while keeping the front of her face "dead," she creates a resonant chamber. It’s basically physics. She’s redirecting sound waves that should be coming out of a wide-open mouth through a much smaller, stationary opening.
Simon Cowell called it her "best ever performance." He wasn't exaggerating. Even the other opera singers who have appeared on AGT—people who could move their mouths—struggled to match the clarity she had while ventriloquizing.
It Wasn't Just One Performance
While the Champions finale is the one everyone shares on Facebook, it wasn't her only brush with the genre.
- Madison Square Garden: In December 2017, she performed "O Mio Babbino Caro" with a live orchestra at the "One Night with the Stars" benefit.
- The Original Audition: She sang "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess. While it’s often categorized as jazz or blues, it’s technically an aria from an opera. That was our first hint that she had the pipes for the "heavy" stuff.
- Vegas Residency: Her headline shows at Planet Hollywood frequently featured these operatic moments because they were the biggest crowd-pleasers.
Is She Actually a Trained Opera Singer?
Sorta, but not in the traditional sense. Darci Lynne Farmer grew up in Oklahoma doing pageants to get over her shyness. She had vocal coaching from Tiana Plemons, but she wasn't some conservatory-trained prodigy destined for the Met.
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She’s a self-taught ventriloquist who applied her singing talent to a puppet.
The nuance here is that she didn't learn opera to be an opera singer. She learned it to be a better ventriloquist. She realized early on that if she could master the hardest vocal genre on the planet, everything else—Motown, country, pop—would feel like a breeze.
Why This Performance Still Matters in 2026
In an era of AI-generated voices and lip-syncing, there’s something raw about watching a teenager do something that seems physically impossible. Darci Lynne singing opera remains the gold standard for variety acts. It proved that ventriloquism wasn't just about "talking with a wooden doll." It could be high art.
She paved the way for a new generation of performers to stop sticking to the "old man" puppet tropes. She made it cool to be a dork with a puppet.
Actionable Takeaways for Performance Fans
If you're looking to dive deeper into the world of vocal ventriloquism or just want to appreciate her work more, here's what you should do next:
- Watch the "Summertime" and "O Mio Babbino Caro" back-to-back. You’ll notice how much her breath control improved between the two.
- Look for the "yodel" clips. Opera isn't her only trick; she has a puppet named Katie that yodels, which requires a completely different type of vocal cord flicking.
- Check out her original music. Since 2024, Darci has been moving away from puppets to show off her "human" voice, which is equally impressive.
The reality is that Darci Lynne didn't just "get lucky" on a reality show. She took the hardest possible vocal discipline and decided to do it the hardest possible way. That's why we’re still talking about it years later.