Sabina Balsamo, soprano

Operatic soprano Sabina Balsamo is co-founder of the Sohap Ensemble, a group of musicians that performs new chamber music in concert and educational outreach settings. Through Sohap she regularly performs in contemporary music concerts and she directed Green Sneakers, a one-man-opera by Ricky Ian Gordon, performed by baritone, John Seesholtz. After winning a grant from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Entrepreneurship Center for Musicians that supported the commission two new pieces for soprano and cello, Balsamo launched a School Program through Sohap to teach local music students about the music Sohap performs.

Balsamo has premiered the role of Angustias in La Casa de Bernarda Alba by Griffin Candey in Cleveland Opera Theater’s NOW Festival in 2022 and Anne in Verlorene Heimat by Dawn Sonntag in 2018. She has sung several roles in new opera workshops including Vicky Hobson in Tom Cipullo's opera Hobson's Choice with CU NOW. In 2019, Balsamo presented her libretto for the one-act opera The Woman in the Wall. This new opera is in its first year of the workshopping process with music by Griffin Candey with the Cleveland Opera Theater.

Other performance credits include La Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro with Opera Steamboat; Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro with Boulder Opera; Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Clara in It's a Wonderful Life, Governess in The Turn of the Screw, and Maria in West Side Story with the Eklund Opera; Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance, Elsie in The Yeomen of The Guard, and Rose in Ruddigore with the Pittsburgh Savoyards; Fredrika in A Little Night Music and Micky in Damn Yankees with Pittsburgh Festival Opera; and Blanche in Dialogues of the Carmelites and Polly in The Threepenny Opera with the Baldwin Wallace Opera.

In 2018, Balsamo won first place in the Honors Competition at CU Boulder and in 2019, she sang Vier Lieder, Op. 27, by Richard Strauss with the University Symphony Orchestra. She has participated in Opera Steamboat’s Opera Artist Institute; CU NOW; Accademia Vocale Lorenzo Malfatti Vocal Training Intensive in Lucca, Italy; Pittsburgh Festival Opera; Harrower Summer Opera Workshop; and Resonanz Opera in Cleveland, Ohio.

She received her B.M. in Vocal Performance at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music and her M.M. in Vocal Performance at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Balsamo has a private studio online and in person, and has experience teaching classrooms with voice students of all ages.

For more information, please visit Balsamo’s artist website, sabinabalsamo.com, or Sohap Ensemble’s website, sohapensemble.com, or find her on social media @sabina.balsamo.

<< CLICK TO BE REDIRECTED TO FEATURED ARTISTS PAGE<<