Praised for her “beautifully clear, light lyric soprano” (Ludwig Van), Sara Schabas has performed as a soloist across North America and Europe. She is the 2024 winner of the Wirth Vocal Prize and a recent alumna of Barbara Hannigan's Equilibrium Young Artists. This season, she performs a recital tour of China as well as residencies in Germany and France with the Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques. She returns to the Masterworks of Oakville as soprano soloist in Messiah, performs recitals in the Canadian Opera Company Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre and Temple Emanuel-el-Beth in Montreal, competes as a pre-selected duo with Alexey Shafirov in the Schubert and Modern Music Liedduo Competition in Graz, Austria, and records the debut recording of James Rolfe's O Greenest Branch as soprano soloist conducted by David Fallis.
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For the 2023-2024 season, Sara sang Musetta in La bohème with the Orchestre Classique de Montréal and ICAV conducted by Victorien Vanoosten and staged by Francois Racine. She gave a recital in the Canadian Opera Company’s Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, including the Canadian premiere of Pulitzer-nominated composer Alex Weiser's in a dark blue night, debuted with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and the Grand Philharmonic Choir as the soloist in James Whitbourn’s Annelies, and sings Eve in the Canadian premiere of Jonathan Dove’s The Walk from the Garden with the Little Opera Company of Winnipeg.
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"Sara Schabas was a delightfully coy Zerlina, singing a very sensuous 'Vedrai, carino'."
Dawn Martens, Opera Canada
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Sara recently premiered the title role in Maxime Goulet’s The Flight of the Hummingbird with Pacific Opera Victoria and Vancouver Opera, returning the following season to sing as the Dormouse in POV’s filmed production of Elizabeth Raum’s The Garden of Alice. In 2019, she worked with Vienna’s Concentus Musicus after moving to Vienna as a grant winner with the Hnatyshyn Foundation and gave a recital in the Zürich Opera House’s Spiegelsaal in 2020 with Canadian pianist Marie-Ève Scarfone. She performed as Henri in Tapestry Opera’s Dora-nominated production of Bandits in the Valley and recorded her debut album with Red Shift Records of Amy Brandon's The Bond, with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Sara began her career singing Papagena (Die Zauberflöte) with the Dayton Opera in Ohio and Juliette (Roméo et Juliette) with the Aspen Opera Theater as well as Mahler's Fourth Symphony under the baton of the late Maestro Lorin Maazel. Previous soloist engagements have included work with the Dayton Philharmonic, Oakville Chamber Symphony, the Missisauga Symphony, Thirteen Strings, the Rockford Symphony Orchestra and the Bach-Elgar Choir. Her operatic repertoire includes Susanna, Lauretta, Corinna (Il viaggio a Reims), Anne Truelove, Juliette, Pamina, Gretel, and numerous other roles. She has been a district winner at the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, Canada's Eckhardt-Grammaté Competition, the Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques, the IRCPA's Singing Stars of Tomorrow, was recently nominated for the Dora Award for Outstanding Performance by an Individual for her performance of Anne Frank in Cecilia Livingston's Singing Only Softly. ​
David Jaeger, The Wholenote Magazine
Sara holds degrees from the University of Toronto (Hon. Voice Perf., Eng. Literature Minor) and Roosevelt University (M.Mus., Siragusa Endowed Scholarship) with additional studies at Vienna’s Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst. She is a certified yoga teacher and a founding board member of the charity Sharing Notes, which brings free musical performances to hospitals and prisons. She is currently pursuing doctoral studies at McGill University researching the Austrian-Canadian mezzo-soprano, Emmy Heim. She is the new editor of Art Song Canada e-magazine, writes for the classical music newsletter Ludwig Van among other publications and is fluent in English, German and French.
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