Sara Schabas

Praised for her “beautifully clear, light lyric soprano” (Ludwig Van), Canadian soprano Sara Schabas’ work reimagines the classical canon through playfulness, collaboration, deeply felt performances and the centring of unheard voices from the past and present. Sara regularly collaborates with composers and sings repertoire ranging from the Baroque to the cutting edge with companies including Vancouver Opera, Pacific Opera Victoria, the Little Opera Company of Winnipeg and Soundstreams. In addition to being a sessional instructor at the University of Manitoba, she is currently a doctoral candidate at McGill University, editor of Art Song Canada e-magazine, a board member of the Canadian Art Song Project and a yoga instructor at various studios in Winnipeg.

  • In the faculty

    • MPS Instructor, Voice
    • Undergraduate and Advanced Diction
    • Song Interpretation

Education

  • BMus, University of Toronto
  • MMus, Roosevelt University
  • DMus, McGill University (anticipated 2027)

Performance highlights

Schabas has performed as a soloist in both opera and concert for organizations including Vancouver Opera, Pacific Opera Victoria, the Vancouver Bach Choir, Théâtre Lyrichorégra on a nine-city tour of mainland China, Thirteen Strings, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Grand Philharmonic Choir, Tapestry Opera, the Little Opera Company of Winnipeg, the Bach Elgar Choir and Soundstreams. In 2020, she was nominated for a Dora Award for Outstanding Performance by an Individual for her performance as Anne Frank in Cecilia Livingston’s Singing Only Softly. Recent seasons have included critically acclaimed performances as Addie Mills in Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek’s The House Without a Christmas Tree; collaborations with soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan as part of her Equilibrium Young Artists program; debuts with the Victoria Philharmonic Choir in British Columbia; and recitals at the Festival d’été de Maison Trestler, Koffler Arts and the Chapelle musicale du Bon-Pasteur in Montreal.

Sara began her career singing Papagena (Die Zauberflöte) with Dayton Opera in Ohio and Juliette (Roméo et Juliette) with the Aspen Opera Theater, as well as performing Mahler’s Fourth Symphony under the baton of the late Maestro Lorin Maazel. She furthered her development at the Aspen Music Festival, the Franz-Schubert-Institut, the Toronto Summer Music Festival and Highlands Opera Studio, receiving generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Fondation Jacqueline Desmarais and the Fonds de recherche du Québec.

Visit Sara Schabas’ website

Ongoing research and creative works

Sara’s recent recording projects include James Rolfe’s O Greenest Branch, conducted by David Fallis for New Focus Recordings; David Jaeger’s “The Sun” for Navona Records; and Amy Brandon’s The Bond, a song cycle written for Sara featuring poems by Miriam Waddington. Her doctoral research focuses on Emmy Heim, an Austrian mezzo-soprano who collaborated with Schoenberg and Vienna’s leading composers before fleeing the Nazis for Canada, where she inspired generations of Canadians through her teaching of lieder.

Awards

  • Wirth Vocal Prize (2024)
  • Eckhardt-Gramatté Competition, Third Prize (2023)
  • Hnatyshyn Award for Vocal Performance (2020)
  • Metropolitan Opera Competition, District Winner and Regional Finals Encouragement Award (2020)
  • Singing Stars of Tomorrow, Career Blueprint (2018)