About
Operatic soprano, Sabina Balsamo has established herself as a passionate advocate for the performance and creation of new opera and vocal chamber music. In December 2023, she started her role as the Director of Artistic Administration and Development Associate with the Boulder Opera in which she leads the Contemporary Opera Program. In addition to her work with Boulder Opera, Balsamo 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 of two new pieces for soprano and cello, Balsamo launched a School Program through Sohap to teach local students about the music Sohap performs. In 2023, Sohap commissioned, workshopped, recorded, and premiered a shadow puppet opera for families called Colorado Sky by Ben Morris and Laura Fuentes with partners Art Song Colorado, Boulder Opera, and Broomfield Council on the Arts and Humanities. Award winning composer Tom Cipullo wrote about the opera “It’s a howl!”
Balsamo has premiered the role of Luna in Colorado Sky with Sohap Ensemble in 2023, 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 Portia in Welcome to the Madness with Opera Steamboat in 2023, and Vicky Hobson in Tom Cipullo's opera, Hobson's Choice with CU NOW.
Other performance credits include: Pamina with the Boulder Opera, La Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro with Opera Steamboat; Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro with Boulder Opera and Opera Fort Collins; 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 person in Boulder, CO, and is a voice faculty member at the University of Wyoming.
“Balsamo imbued Susanna with a judicious mix of coquetry and sincere emotion. ”