In 1999, Ms. McDonald was a winner of the Sullivan Foundation Competition and was the recipient of the first Leonie Rysanek Award in the George London Competition in 1998. Soon after making her New York City debut at Town Hall in Berlioz’ Les Nuits D’Eté, she was chosen as First Prize winner of the 1997 Palm Beach Opera Competition. In 1996, she was awarded the First Prize in the Eleanor McCollum Competition at Houston Grand Opera.

She enjoyed great success with the title role in Tosca with Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Italy, thereafter a 15 city tour of Spain including Toledo, Zaragoza, and Burgos theaters. Other recent engagements include Ariadne in Ariadne auf Naxos for her Seattle Opera debut; and Leonore in Il Trovatore for Teatre de Mostoles in Madrid, Spain; Micaela in Carmen, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni and Iphigenie in Iphigenie en Tauride with New York City Opera; La Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro with Tulsa Opera; Tatyana in Eugene Onegin with Opera Delaware; Aida and Iris for the Berkshire Opera Festival. Serena in Porgy & Bess in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands and New York City Opera; Fiordiligi in Cosi Fan Tutte and Armide in Gluck’s Armide with the Juilliard Opera Center; and scenes from Andrea Chenier (Maddalena di Coigny) and Manon Lescaut, (Manon), at Palm Beach Opera under the guidance of Maestro Anton Guadagno.

In 2006, in addition to singing Tosca in Bologna, Ms McDonald was Aida at the Luglio Musicale Festival in Sicily; and Serena in Porgy & Bess in Detroit.  She was the soprano soloist in the Verdi Requiem with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra; gave recitals for the George London Foundation and the Caramoor Music Festival; and recorded the role of Serena in DECCA's new recording of Porgy & Bess.

Ms. McDonald has appeared as soloist in the Dvorak Requiem with the Berkshire Opera Festival; the Mozart Requiem with the Spoleto Festival USA; Mozart’s C minor Mass with the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Christopher Hogwood at the Kennedy Center; Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Orchestra Albert Schweitzer in Strasbourg, France; the Brahm’s Requiem under the guidance of Lorenzo Muti; Dvorak’s Stabat Mater with the Raleigh Oratorio Society; and both Poulenc’s Gloria and Verdi’s Requiem with the North Carolina Symphony. Ms. McDonald can be heard as the soprano soloist in the Grammy-nominated recording of Ned Rorem’s Evidence of Things Not Seen, recorded live at the Library of Congress in Washington DC with the New York Festival of Song.