About
Stephanie Chigas, originally from the Chicago area, studied at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and at Boston University’s Opera Institute. Her opera credits include lead roles in La Tragédie de Carmen, La Finta Giardiniera, The Rape of Lucretia, Bizet’s Carmen, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Così fan tutte and Hansel and Gretel.
She has sung with the Santa Fe Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and the Olney Theatre Center. In the fall of 2005, Ms. Chigas covered the role of Leda in The Mines of Sulphur for the New York City Opera and for Sinfonia da Camera she sang the role of La Sphinge in the North American Premiere of George Enescu’s opera Oedipe.
Ms. Chigas is equally as comfortable on the concert stage. In 2001 she performed the mezzo-soprano solo in the Duruflè Requiem at Carnegie Hall. Other concert credits include Brahms Alto Rhapsody and Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasie and Mass in C.
Ms. Chigas was awarded the top prize in the 2005 George London Foundation Competition and is the 2004 recipient of the Stephen Shrestinian Award for Excellence awarded through the Boston Lyric Opera. She was a 2003 Grand National Semi-Finalist for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and the Second Place Winner in the New England Region Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 2005.
Recent opera and concert performances include Flora Bervoix in La Traviata and Albine in Thaïs, both with Boston Lyric Opera and Cherubino in Le Nozze de Figaro with Sinfonia da Camera. She was the soloist in Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Requiem at Carnegie Hall and the soloist in Mahler’s No. 2 “The Resurrection” at Symphony Hall with the Boston University Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Chigas has performed with the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra on many occasions, most recently as Idamante in Mozart’s Idomeneo. This summer she joins Boston Midsummer Opera in their second season at the Tsai Center to perform scenes and arias in “The Tales of Offenbach”.