Joyner Holtzen, née Horn, made her mainstage debut as a soprano with Des Moines Metro Opera in 2025 as the Rooster in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. While at Des Moines, she also was seen as Gerhilde in Die Walküre, and performed the roles of Ellen Orford (Peter Grimes), Vitellia (La clemenza di Tito), Giulietta (Les contes d’Hoffmann), and Jenůfa (Jenůfa) in various scenes programs. Joyner was also seen as Corvina in Musto’s Volpone with the A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute. Most recently, she was named a winner of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition in the North Carolina District.

Previously as a mezzo-soprano, Joyner starred as Calisto (La Calisto) with the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music (CCM); other roles include Un pâtre, La Chatte, and L’Écureuil in L’enfant et les sortilèges with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Third Woodsprite cover (Rusalka) and Kitchen Boy cover (Rusalka) with Des Moines Metro Opera, and Florence Pike (Albert Herring) with the Boston University Opera Institute. Joyner was delighted to partake in the workshop of Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice, taking the opera to the Metropolitan Opera and performing the role of Alto Chorus.

In concert, Joyner was the mezzo-soprano soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in their Beethoven Akadamie 1808, a recreation of Beethoven’s 1808 concert where he premiered the 5th, among other works. She was soloist for Beethoven’s Mass in CMajor, Op. 86 and the Choral Fantasy. With Cincinnati Camerata, she appeared as the mezzo-soprano soloist in the Vivaldi Magnificat.

Joyner is also an actress and singer and a recent graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). While at LAMDA, Joyner performed the roles of Diana in All’s Well that Ends Well, Charlotte Malcolm in A Little Night Music, Letitia Hardy in The Belle’s Stratagem, Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi, Henry VI/Catesby in Margaret of Anjou, Estela/Lisarda in The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs, and Adriana in The Comedy of Errors. 

Prior to her studies in London, Joyner was seen as Elsa Schraeder in The Sound of Music and the Countess Andrenyi in Murder on the Orient Express with The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem.

Joyner currently resides in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.