Bold. Brave. Brilliant.

Arizona Opera Cast Members & Creatives

Margaret Gawrysiak

Margaret Gawrysiak, mezzo-soprano, recently performed Baba the Turk and Mother Goose inThe Rake’s Progress; Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd; and La Mère d’Antonia in Les contes d’Hoffmann with Wolf Trap Opera; Gertrude/Witch in Hansel and Gretel,Eunice in A Streetcar Named Desire, and Marzelline in Le nozze di Figaro with Virginia Opera; and Frugola in Il tabarro, and Zita in Gianni Schicchi with Maestro Lorin Maazel at the Castleton Festival.

Recent engagements for Margaret have included Frugola in Il tabarro with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis; and a return to Wolf Trap Opera for Dame Quickly in Falstaff. Future engagements include a return to Seattle Opera for Vera Boronel in The Consul; Ježibaba in Rusalka with North Carolina Opera; and Mistress Hibbons in the world premiere of Lori Laitman’s The Scarlet Letter with Opera Colorado.

Margaret’s engagements have also included Giovanna in Rigoletto with Florida Grand Opera; and a workshop of Nico Muhly’s Two Boys with the Metropolitan Opera. As a graduate of Seattle Opera’s Young Artist Program she was featured as Dinah in Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, Zita in Gianni Schicchi, Olga in Eugene Onegin, and Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As a member of San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program she covered Beppe in L’amico Fritz, and performed Isabella in scenes from L’italiana in Algeri on the Schwabacher Concert Program. Margaret was twice a member of the Young American Artists Program at Glimmerglass Opera where she performed as Juno in Orpheus in the Underworld,and covered the roles of the Grandmother and Aunt in Jenůfa. Other performances have included Madame de la Haultiere in Cendrillon with Aspen Opera Theatre; a double bill of Gianni Schicchi and L’enfant et les Sortileges with the Opera Company of Philadelphia; Marcellina in Le nozze di Figaro with Eugene Opera; the Witch inHansel and Gretel with the Buffalo Philharmonic; Berta in Il barbiere di Sivigliawith Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre; Mother Marie in the Dialogues of the Carmelites at the Eastman School of Music; and Little Buttercup in HMS Pinafore with Opera Illinois.

In concert, she has performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood under Lorin Maazel, and the Saginaw Bay Symphony; Mozart’s Requiem and Verdi’s Requiem with the Springfield Symphony; Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra; Weill’s Mahagonny Songspiel with the Seattle Symphony; and Dessau’s Haggadah shel Pesach with the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall.

In 2009 Margaret was a winner of the Sullivan Foundation Award and received second place in the Lotte Lenya Competition. She has received awards from the Jensen Foundation, Portland Opera’s Lieber Awards, the Gerda Lissner Foundation, and Fort Worth Opera’s McCammon Awards. Geneseo, IL is her hometown.

Performances