A star comes home to make her long-awaited Seattle Opera debut 

This is where it all started.

J’Nai Bridges treasures the memories of her youth in Lakewood just outside Tacoma. Growing up in a close-knit, supportive family, she was encouraged to pursue her exceptional musical talents early on. Even today, she can count on her parents and siblings to travel far and wide to see her perform on the world’s leading opera stages — whether at the Metropolitan Opera in New York or in Munich, where she made her European debut in 2017.

Bridges loves coming back to visit her childhood home, where her parents still live. But this time, they’ll only have to take a short trip up to Seattle to catch her latest major engagement.

On Jan. 20 and 22, the acclaimed mezzo-soprano — whose résumé includes performing for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Kennedy Center — makes her Seattle Opera debut in concert performances of “Samson and Delilah” by Camille Saint-Saëns. Based on the biblical tale of betrayal and revenge recounted in the Book of Judges, the 1877 opera features one of the most glorious roles ever written for her voice type. Bridges, 35, hadn’t even been born the last time “Samson and Delilah” was performed here (in 1965).

“My skills were honed during my conservatory studies in New York and Philadelphia, but it was in Lakewood and Tacoma where my gifts were first identified,” Bridges said in a recent Zoom conversation from her New York City home.

Her return to the region to sing Delilah therefore signifies more than “just performing. It’s the best gift that I know how to give in return.”

As a teenage student at Charles Wright Academy, Bridges also excelled in sports and had to decide between a career in professional basketball or music. She recalls being “a choir kid” who sang not only in the school choir but in the gospel choir at Allen AME Church in Tacoma.

Bridges’ participation in the Tacoma Youth Chorus led her to the opera stage for the first time, when, as a high school senior, she sang in the chorus of a Tacoma Opera production of Puccini’s “Tosca.”

“Tacoma has a small but mighty music scene,” she says. “Growing up hearing these different choirs and the Tacoma Symphony is what really formed my ear and then later transferred to my voice.”

To mark her return to the region, Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards will confer an award of special recognition on Bridges at the City of Tacoma’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr., birthday celebration on Jan. 16.

Bridges has made her name singing not only familiar repertoire — Bizet’s Carmen is one of her signature roles — but new music as well. She was part of the original cast of John Adams’ “Girls of the Golden West” in 2017 and starred in the world premieres of Adolphus Hailstork’s recent works “A Knee on the Neck” and “Tulsa 1921” (which commemorated the centenary of the horrific massacre of the Black community in Tulsa by a racist mob). In June, she returns to Seattle to sing in Leonard Bernstein’s rarely performed “Songfest” with the Seattle Symphony and Marin Alsop.

It was with Philip Glass’ “Akhnaten” that Bridges made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2019, the recording of which won a Grammy Award. She’s currently in the running for best classical solo vocal album in the 2023 Grammy Awards with “Lord, How Come Me Here?”

Success was rapidly following success when the pandemic brought live performances to a halt. Singing Delilah in Seattle brings an opportunity to return to the challenging role she first took on in March 2020 at Washington National Opera in the nation’s capital.

“I felt like I was on the top of the world,” Bridges recalls of the lauded D.C. production, which was directed and conducted by figures with Seattle Opera associations (Peter Kazaras and John Fiore, respectively; Fiore, the son of Seattle Opera’s late chorus master, has become a distinguished conductor based in Geneva). But after only three performances, the run had to be abruptly canceled.

Bridges says she finds the siren-like Delilah especially intriguing because “she’s the master seductress and manipulator. And with that come so many opportunities to delve into different colors, dramatically and vocally. She’s probably just doing what all the men do, but she’s a woman. So she’s characterized as evil, but she’s actually wanting power like everyone else.”

Appearing in a concert version of the opera has the advantage of allowing her to focus on these shifting colors. The score includes one of the best-loved arias of French grand opera as well as several memorable duets with Samson, who will be sung by tenor Yonghoon Lee in his role debut.

“It’s the perfect time to come back home,” says Bridges, “because I’m at a place in my artistry now where I feel very proud to deliver my best as a thank you.”