Sara Sturdivant is a contralto, pianist, organist, and composer based in Portsmouth, NH. She is a graduate of the Mannes Conservatory, where she holds a Professional Studies Diploma in voice and opera, and the University of Southern Maine, where she holds both Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees in voice. Recent performances have included Sr. Helen Prejean and Jake Heggie’s The Deepest Desire with Hope St-Germain and Hentus Van Rooyen, “Sorceress” in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Saint Mary Schola, and many other concerts during the last 4 seasons of Saint Mary Schola, where she serves as a board member and chair of the media committee.
Career highlights have included being a studio artist with Chautauqua Opera, Opera Maine’s Emerging Artist Program, BASOTI, and Mannes Opera; performing Respighi’s Il Tramonto with the Orion String Quartet, performing “Gertrude” in Romeo et Juliette and “Giovanna” in Rigolettowith Opera Maine, and the alto soloist in Handel’s Messiah with Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall. She has also won the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ, Bay Chamber Concerts, and Portland Rossini Club awards, and was the 2017 New Hampshire Opera Idol. Sara currently works as collaborative keyboard artist at First Parish in Portland, and will appear this summer as the Fairy Godmother in Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s revival of Cinderella at City Theater in Biddeford.