Born in Leeds and currently based in Bradford, professional singer, opera director and vocal animateur Sarah Estill originally read History at Keble College, Oxford, before graduating with Distinction with an MA in Performance from the University of Huddersfield. She furthered her postgraduate studies on various scholarships at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Dublin Conservatoire, Flanders Opera Studio and the Royal Northern College of Music as Winner of the Dame Eva Turner Award for Dramatic Sopranos. Most recently, studied in New York where she held a scholarship at Mannes College of Music studying on their Opera Course. She is currently affiliated to both the Wagner Society and Britten-Pears Young Artists Programmes.
As a singer she has toured in the title role of Tosca and as Leonora Il Trovatore with Opus1 Opera both in the UK and abroad. Other roles have included Ariadne Ariadne auf Naxos, Violetta La Traviata, Donna Anna Don Giovanni, Giannetta L’elisir d’amore, Guadalena La périchole, Amelia A Masked Ball and the title-roles in Suor Angelica, Turandot and Aida. Already an established Benjamin Britten singer, she has sung Lady Billows Albert Herring at the 2005 Aldeburgh Festival, Miss Jessel The Turn of the Screw in Malta, the War Requiem in St Albans Abbey, and Female Chorus The Rape of Lucretia in Belgium and at Dartington Festival. In 2005 she also covered Ellen Orford for Surrey Opera and sang in the Peter Grimes conducted by Sir Simon Rattle at the Salzburg Festival. She made her debut in Wagner repertoire as Gutrune in Götterdämmerung in Edinburgh, followed by Helmwige Die Walküre, Flower Maiden I Parsifal, and also Woglinde/Freia Das Rheingold Sieglinde Die Walküre Brünnhilde Siegfried for the Northern Wagner Orchestra’s Ring Cycle at Leeds University, and most recently Eva in Die Meistersinger in Edinburgh. She will sing Brünnhilde Götterdämmerung in Leeds and Freia Das Rheingold in Edinburgh this September.
As an opera producer, she is currently Artistic Director of Opera Femina, the UK’s first all-female opera company, for whom she has directed Suor Angelica on tour and Hansel and Gretel at the Buxton Festival, and also for Utility Opera, for whom she recently directed Madam Butterfly at Grassington Festival. Other directing engagements include Berlioz Beatrice and Benedick for West Riding Opera, Dido and Aeneas for Skipton Camerata, A Night in Paris for Opera on a Shoestring on tour and The Fate of Young Lovers for the Citizen’s Theatre in Glasgow.
A former member of Opera North, she is in much demand as a singing teacher and vocal animateur and continues to be involved with a number of educational projects for Opera North and English National Opera. She has covered Mother/Witch for Opera North in Hansel and Gretel as part of their Autumn tour. She has extensive experience in concerts and oratorio and has been a guest classical artist on the QE2 cruise liner. Recent highlights have included working with Jose Cura, the Four Last Songs/Liebestod at the Chelsea Festival and singing for HRH Queen Elizabeth II.

For more information see http://www.sarahestill.com