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S A R A H   E S T I L L
S o p r a n o

8-10 Wicken Lane
Thornton
Bradford
BD13 3PB

Tel: 07932 664940

 Sarah Estill read History at Keble College, Oxford, before graduating with Distinction with an MA in Performance from the University of Huddersfield. She furthered her studies gaining an MMus from the Opera School of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with Patricia Hay, spent a year on vocal scholarship with Mary Brennan at Dublin DIT Conservatoire of Music, and took part in the inaugural performance of the recently formed Flanders Opera Studio. She studied for a further year at the Royal Northern College of Music as Winner of the Dame Eva Turner Award for Dramatic Sopranos. Most recently, she has returned from New York where she held a scholarship at Mannes College of Music studying on their Opera Course with Ruth Falcon. She won the Prize for the most promising student at the Bayerische Staatsoper Sommerkurs in 1999, and was a finalist in both the 2003 Mastersingers Competition for Female Wagner Singers and the 2004 Bayreuth Bursary Competition. She is an alumnus of both the The Mastersingers Young Artist Programme and the Britten-Pears Young Artist and the Programme, where she was recipient of the 2005 Joan Cross Commemorative Bursary. In 2007 she was a medal recipient at NDO's inaugural Jose Cura Opera Project.

Already an established Britten singer, she has sung Lady Billows Albert Herring at the 2005 Britten Festival in Aldeburgh and at the RSAMD in 1999, Miss Jessel The Turn of the Screw for Opera Parnassus, Malta, the War Requiem with Philip Langridge and David Wilson-Johnson in St Albans Abbey, and Female Chorus The Rape of Lucretia both at the Flanders Opera Studio and most recently in an historic production of The Rape of Lucretia at the Barn Theatre, Dartington Hall, the venue for which it was originally written. In 2005 she also covered Ellen Orford for Surrey Opera and was part of the Peter Grimes conducted by Simon Rattle at the Salzburg Festival.

Most recently she has toured in the title role of Tosca and as Leonora in Il Trovatore with Opus1 Opera both in the UK and abroad and covered the Witch/Mother for Opera North in Hansel and Gretel. Her other operatic roles have included Ariadne Ariadne auf Naxos and Violetta La Traviata at the Dartington Festival, Donna Anna Don Giovanni at the RSAMD, Giannetta L'elisir d'amore for Opera Theatre Company (Ireland), Guadalena La périchole at Buxton Festival, Aida for Kentish Opera, Amelia A Masked Ball for Surrey Opera and the title-role in Suor Angelica with Opera Femina on tour and at the Buxton Festival. She made her debut in Wagner repertoire as Gutrune in Götterdämmerung in Edinburgh, followed by Helmwige in Die Walküre for The Mastersingers and Flower Maiden I Parsifal for Palace Opera. She sang Woglinde and Freia for the Northern Wagner Orchestra's Das Rheingold as part of their Ring Cycle in September 2005, Sieglinde Die Walküre in 2006 and Brünnhilde Siegfried in 2007, followed by Eva Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. She has understudied Venus in Mozart's Ascanio in Alba at the 2005 Buxton Festival, Tosca for Pavilion Opera, Mimi La Bohème for Opus1 Opera, Nedda I Pagliacci for English Pocket Opera and Rosalinde Die Fledermaus for English Touring Opera.

Her concert repertoire includes Berg Three Fragments from Wozzeck, Mahler Symphony No. 4, Elijah, Rossini Stabat Mater, Strauss Four Last Songs and the Verdi Requiem and various Wagner excerpts. She sings regularly as a Soloist with the Londom International Orchestra. A former member of Opera North, she continues to be involved with a number of their educational projects including Opera North's Opera Direct and Opera 1 and has undertaken education work on behalf of English National Opera, Buxton Festival and English Pocket Opera.

Sarah has also directed various projects including Dido and Aeneas (Skipton Camerata), Suor Angelica (UK tour) and Hansel and Gretel (Buxton Festival 2003), Berlioz Beatrice and Benedick and Nicolai The Merry Wives of Windsor for West Riding Opera and 'A Night in Paris' for Opera on a Shoestring and "The Fate of Young Lovers" at the Citizen's Theatre, Glasgow. She is currently Artistic Director of Opera Femina, the UK's first all-female opera company, and of Utility Opera, she directed Madam Butterfly at Grassington Festival last summer.

In May 2007 Sarah performed for HRH Queen Elizabeth II at the opening of The Media Centre in Huddersfield