Sapphira Cristál (runner-up and Miss Congeniality of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 16) is a classically trained opera singer, composer, and drag queen known for her theatrical lip syncs and six-octave range. She is renowned as a charismatic host who forges a special connection with her audiences.

Sapphira holds 16 pageant crowns and has performed globally. In 2024, she was thrice the guest artist in Madonna’s Celebration Tour, and she debuted her original operatic production, Soundcake, with Monét X Change and Thorgy Thor at Lincoln Center. Afterward, she brought her one-woman show, The Cristál Ball Tour, across North America. Recently, Sapphira has hosted and headlined Pops programs at the San Francisco Opera, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Sapphira inspires young people through appearances at colleges, youth camps, and high schools. She taught several years of master classes in drag makeup and performance at Emerson College, and she has given artist talks at Rockland Community College. An experienced attitude and stage presence coach, Sapphira has also taught master classes at the Philadelphia Burlesque Academy and various dance studios.

Sapphira enjoys partnering with charitable organizations to raise funds to change people’s lives. Her personal credo is: “There is no better exercise for the heart than reaching down to lift someone up,” and she has made it her mission to uplift, encourage and inspire those around her.

“She sings with a sturdy, deeply colored tenor with lovely fullness and soft edges, slipping in and out of its category,” wrote Michael Andor Brodeur for The Washington Post. Katherine Goforth is an artist whose voice and practice both resist easy classification. She is equally at home in the concert hall and in original work she conceives, produces, and performs.
Goforth’s international credits include the world premiere European tour of Philip Venables and Ted Huffman’s The F****ts and Their Friends Between Revolutions, performed at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Manchester International Festival, and Bregenzer Festspiele. The New York Times noted her among the production’s vocal standouts, while Opera News cited “the thrilling tenor power of Katherine Goforth” among the festival’s strongest performances.
In 2024 she premiered Where Would We Be Without Defeat at Stanford Live, a concert-theatre piece she conceived as a trans feminist reflection on the music and history of Weimar Germany. The performance includes music from Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler, and non-classical songwriters like Frank Wedekind, Wolf Biermann, and Ton Steine Scherben.
Most recently, Goforth was a soloist in Andrew Yee’s Trans Requiem, premiering the work at Trinity Wall Street in New York with fellow soloist Breanna Sinclairé, Trinity Choir, NOVUS Orchestra and conductor Melissa Attebury.
Goforth’s Lieder singing is informed by direct contact with many of the greatest recitalists and pianists of our time at the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, Heidelberger Frühling Liedakademie, and Franz Schubert Institut. Her interpretations of Gustav Mahler have drawn particular attention, with recent debuts of Das Lied von der Erde with 45th Parallel Chamber Orchestra and Des Knaben Wunderhorn with Harmonia Orchestra.
After a national search, Goforth was chosen as the inaugural recipient of Washington National Opera’s True Voice Award for trans and nonbinary artists. She participated in a residency at WNO and gave a recital with pianist Christopher Cano at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. She received the Career Advancement Award from the Women in Classical Music Symposium at the Dallas Symphony in 2022, selected by Julia Bullock, with whom she shared the recital stage at the Symposium.
Goforth is a regular guest speaker at major institutions including the League of American Orchestras’ Anne Parsons Leadership Program, O2: The Canadian Opera & Orchestra Conference, Opera America’s National Conference, Mountainfilm Festival, CUNY/CLAGS Queer-Class Relations Conference, Boston Conservatory and New England Conservatory.
Goforth holds a Master of Music from The Juilliard School and a Bachelor of Music from St. Olaf College. She was a member of the Opernstudio der Oper Köln, where she sang Mozart’s Tamino and Salieri’s Conte di Bandiera in Studio productions, 3. Jude in a mainstage production of Salome, and covered roles in mainstage productions of Peter Grimes and Fidelio.
Her artistic practice has grown from traditional conservatory training and opera houses to include new ways of performing the inherited repertoire and original work she develops herself. She is among the most distinctive and necessary voices in classical music today.

Having performed all over the world from Singapore to Cologne to Sydney and on America’s Got Talent, she toured the south in 2017 with SWAG, (Singers with a Goal) and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus and was a featured performer in the documentary, Gay Chorus: Deep South.

Please put your hands together for San Francisco’s DIVAlicious Dreamgirl – Afrika America!!!

https://www.instagram.com/afrikaamerica/

NINA JONES (they/them) is a San Francisco–based mezzo-soprano originally from Bolton, Massachusetts. Recent credits include Oberto in Alcina (Festival Opera), Cobweb in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro (Pocket Opera), Licco in Ercole Amante, Geminio in La Flora, and Bireno in Olimpia Vendicata (Ars Minerva), Figaro in The Barber of Seville and Dandini in La Cenerentola (San Francisco Opera Guild), and Handmaid/Chorus in The Handmaid’s Tale (San Francisco Opera). Additional appearances include L’enfant in L’enfant et les sortilèges, Flora in The Enchanted Pig (SFCM), and ensemble in Birds & Balls (Opera Parallèle). Nina holds a Master of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Music with honors from McGill University’s Schulich School of Music.

Host…Artist…Producer and Social Justice Warrior are just some of the titles associated with this Drag Out The Vote Ambassador! Utilizing her platform to get out the vote, raise funds for the fight against inequity and injustice and stand up for our most marginalized in our community has been her calling. She’s been a part of Politics are a DRAG! in the Northern California Bay Area, in Phoenix’s Party at the Polls for DOTV and When We All Vote across the nation! EXPANSIVE is pleased to welcome back for her 5th consecutive year as your host, the reigning Empress of San Francisco, Her Most Imperial Majesty, Afrika America!

Having performed all over the world from Singapore to Cologne to Sydney and on America’s Got Talent, she toured the south in 2017 with SWAG, (Singers with a Goal) and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus and was a featured performer in the documentary, Gay Chorus: Deep South.

Please put your hands together for San Francisco’s DIVAlicious Dreamgirl – Afrika America!!!

https://www.instagram.com/herricanewilma/

https://www.wilfordkelly.com/