VERA SAVAGE - APPRENTICE ARTIST

OPERA SARATOGA DEBUT SEASON: Tisbe in La Cenerentola; Sorceress cover and Ensemble in Dido and Aeneas.

Mezzo-soprano Vera Savage’s 2014-2015 season highlights included the role of Sesto in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito with Opera in the Heights; her debut with Florentine Opera in Milwaukee, WI as Mrs. Baines in Elmer Gantry; Verdi’s Requiem in Boston, MA; and a complete performance of Dominick Argento’s song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf.  With the Opera Institute in Boston, MA, Vera was seen as the Old Prioress in Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, Flora in La Traviata, and Madeline Mitchell in Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers. Ms. Savage has spent several summers as a young artist at the Caramoor Music Festival where she covered the title role in Rossini’s Semiramide, Adalgisa in Norma, and the title role in Donizetti’s Maria di Rohan. Under acclaimed stage director Tito Capobianco she performed the roles of Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni and Hannah Glawari in The Merry Widow. Recently, Vera placed fourth in Shreveport Opera’s Mary Jacobs Smith “Singer of the Year” Competition, was a finalist in the Bel Canto Scholarship’s annual competition, and was a semi-finalist in the “Joy of Singing” art song competition. In past years, Vera was a finalist in the Houston Grand Opera’s Eleanor McCollum Competition, received the top vocal prize in the Arts and Letters Competition in Bloomington, Indiana, and second place in the Bel Canto Foundation of Chicago Competition.