Jackie Evancho

Jackie Evancho was an opera singer from Season 5 of America's Got Talent. She finished in second place in the competition.

Background
Jackie Evancho says her desire to perform was born after her family saw the film version of “The Phantom of the Opera” when she was just seven years old. “We went to see it in the movie theater. It was very, very good,” Jackie told Pennsylvania television station WPXI. “It was a very long movie and we were mesmerized by it.” Her mother, Lisa, purchased the DVD and something in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score made a big impression on the little girl. Still, as she sang the melodramatic tunes from the film around the house in her shimmering soprano, “We really didn’t think [her voice] was anything out of the ordinary,” says her dad, Mike. “She’s our oldest daughter; there were no other seven-year-olds to compare it to.”

Mike and Lisa remember the night they realized that had more than just a “nice” voice. “At her first little talent competition, we invited my parents,” Mike recalls. “She started to sing, my folks looked at each other like ‘What’s going on here?’ Plus with the crowd reaction, we knew how special her singing was.”

She auditioned twice for “AGT” in person in Philadelphia before Season 5, but the producers passed on her. “I saw a video with Nick Cannon saying they were [also] doing YouTube auditions,” recalls Jackie’s father Mike. “We decided to put something up and then we forgot about it.” 1

Audition
Jackie Evancho submitted her audition onto YouTube. The audition consisted of singing "Panis Angelicus." Her audition was strong to receive enough votes from YouTube users to vote her immediately into the Quarterfinals.



Quarterfinals
Jackie Evancho's Quarterfinals performance consisted of swallowing singing "O Mio Babbino Caro." She received enough votes to be sent to the Semifinals instead of Ryan Rodriguez.



Semifinals
Jackie Evancho's Semifinals performance consisted of singing "Time to Say Goodbye." She received enough votes to be sent to the Finals instead of Haspop and Maestro Alexander Bui.



Top 10
Jackie Evancho's Top 10 Finals performance consisted of singing "Pie Jesu." She received enough votes to be sent to the Final 4 instead of Anna and Patryk.



Final 4
Jackie Evancho's Final 4 Finals performance consisted of singing "Ave Maria."



Finale
For the finale, Jackie Evancho performed "Time to Say Goodbye" in a duet with Sarah Brightman. Jackie was revealed to have finished in second place in the competition that same night, over Fighting Gravity and Prince Poppycock, but under Michael Grimm.

After the Show
Since appearing on America’s Got Talent, Jackie has recorded one EP (O Holy Night) and three full-length albums (Heavenly Christmas, Dream With Me, and Songs from the Silver Screen), all of which raced to the top of the Billboard charts.

When O Holy Night, which was Jackie’s major label debut, was released in November 2010, it became the year's #1 best-selling debut recording with sales exceeding 1 million copies. It rocketed into the Billboard 200 at #2, and the EP’s chart and sales success secured Jackie's position as the year's top-selling debut artist as well as the youngest female solo artist to debut during the SoundScan era. In addition to its pop chart success, O Holy Night reached #1 on the Billboard Classical Chart and #2 on the Billboard Holiday chart.

In June 2011, Dream With Me, her first studio album was released. A mix of operatic arias, show tunes and pop standards, it debuted on the Billboard Top 200 chart at #2 and was certified Gold after only four weeks of release. When PBS aired Dream With Me In Concert on their Great Performances series, it instantly became one of their most broadcast programs of the year and was used extensively during pledge drives.

In the finale of Season 6  in Episode 632 of America's Got Talent on September 14, 2011, Jackie Evancho sang "Nessun Dorma" as a special guest.



In the summer of 2011, she sold out concert halls around the country during a tour that culminated with a show at home in Pittsburgh and later at Lincoln Center in New York City. Her most recent effort, “Heavenly Christmas,” a full-length holiday album, was released in November 2011. 2 Her fourth studio album, Songs from the Silver Screen, was released on October 2, 2012.

Trivia

 * Jackie Evancho has progressed farther in the competition than any other YouTube Act, all the way to 2nd Place. West Springfield Dance Team reached the Top 10, but no other YouTube Act has progressed past the Semifinals.
 * She was the youngest act in the Final 4 of Season 5, being only ten years old. She was also the only female contestant.