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Lecturer, Voice |
Operatic soprano, Sabina Balsamo has established herself as a passionate advocate for the performance and creation of new opera and vocal chamber music. She is the co-founder of Sohap Ensemble, an ensemble that presents 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 students about the music Sohap performs.
Balsamo has premiered the role of Luna in Colorado Sky by Ben Morris and Laura Fuentes, a co-production with Sohap Ensemble and Art Song Colorado in 2023, Angustias in La Casa de Bernarda Alba by Griffin Candey in 2022, and Anne in Verlorene Heimat by Dawn Sonntag in 2018 in Cleveland Opera Theater’s New Opera Works Festival. She has sung several roles in opera workshops including Vicky Hobson in Tom Cipullo's Hobson's Choice with CU NOW and Portia in Leanna Kirchoff’s Welcome to the Madness with Opera Steamboat.
Other performance credits include: La Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro with Opera Steamboat; A concert version of the title role in Manon, Sandman and Dew Fairy in Hansel and Gretel, and 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; 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 Steamboats’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 Boulder, CO, and is a voice faculty member at the University of Wyoming. She is the Program Manager with Art Song Colorado and Artistic Director of Sohap Ensemble.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
