ABOUT

Soprano Sara LeMesh, hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle for her “powerhouse performance of vocal majesty and expressive translucency,” is a dramatic presence on the opera stage, an avid chamber musician, and an advocate of contemporary music. Most recently, she covered the role of Young Leah/Lisa in the New York Premiere of Lori Laitman’s opera, Uncovered, with City Lyric Opera, and stepped in for two of five performances. In October 2022, she made her debut with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players singing Fauré's La bonne chanson and Chausson's Chanson perpétuelle. During the summer of 2022, LeMesh was a fellow at the Marlboro Music Festival, and she will return to the festival in the summer of 2023. Upcoming performances include a residency with Opera Naples in Naples, Florida between February and April of 2023. She will perform the role of Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen, Woman #1 in Frida by Robert Xavier Rodriguez, and Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan. She will also appear in several concerts with the Southwest Florida Symphony Orchestra. 

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On the operatic stage, LeMesh has portrayed Lucy Brown in Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera with City Lyric Opera (2020); Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni with Pocket Opera (2020); and Norina in Donizetti's Don Pasquale at the Mendocino Music Festival (2018). During the summer of 2019, the Californian soprano starred as Bess McNeill in the West Coast premiere of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s award-winning opera, Breaking the Waves with West Edge Opera. The San Francisco Classical Voice called her performance an “extraordinary realization of Bess” with “singing [which] soars and swoons.” Opera News lauded her “mesmerizing” performance during which she “projected the character’s anguish, fervency, and increasingly fragile emotional state” in an “urgent, tonally secure and affectingly plangent vocal performance.”

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LeMesh has performed throughout the United States and Europe at venues and festivals including The Morgan Library & Museum, Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, Music Academy of the West, American Bach Soloists, and International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum Salzburg. While at Tanglewood, she was a soloist in Berlioz’s Les nuits d'été under the baton of Stéphane Denève and co-premiered Folk Songs by Bernard Rands. She is also a regular soloist at Bard Music West in San Francisco where she has performed Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre, Copland’s Dickinson Songs, and works by Henry Cowell, William Grant Still, and Grażyna Bacewicz. 

 

With pianist Allegra Chapman, LeMesh performs in the piano-vocal duo Chordless, creating unique spaces to explore and appreciate music that has historically been ignored or is brand new. In February 2020, the duo produced a “heartbreakingly beautiful” (San Francisco Chronicle) music video for the final movement of George Crumb's Apparition. The film received international recognition and was an official selection in the Tokyo International Short Film Festival and Montreal Independent Film Festival. It was also a finalist in the Seattle Film Festival and Hudson Valley Film Fest. The music video is publicly available online - click here to watch. 

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LeMesh received her Master of Music Degree from the Bard College Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Music Degree from Rice University. She currently resides in New York City with her husband. When she isn’t singing in traditional venues, you can find LeMesh performing outreach recitals in prisons, rehabilitation centers, and nursing homes.

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Updated November 2022