Sara Shiff

Biography

Soprano Sara Shiff, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, graduated from Princeton University in 2025, where she studied History and Vocal Performance. This fall she will begin her Master of Music at the Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Professor Amy Johnson.

Sara is the first-prize winner of the Minnesota Sings Vocal Competition and a winner of the Princeton University Concerto/Aria Competition. She has also won the Dakota Valley Symphony Concerto/Aria Competition, Schmidt Vocal Competition (Minnesota) and the MacPhail Concerto/Aria Competition. At Princeton, Sara performed Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and appeared as a featured soloist with the Princeton Camerata Orchestra and the Princeton University Orchestra (PUO). Her concert repertoire includes Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 (“Das himmlische Leben”) with PUO and Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 at The Juilliard School. She has also performed scenes from Norma and La Traviata, and premiered scenes from Sarah Kirkland Snider’s opera Hildegarde.

Her training includes the Berlin Opera Academy, Laboratorio Teatrale di San Miniato, the Princeton in Pisa Italian Language Program at the Scuola Normale Superiorie, and the Brevard Music Center. Sara studies with Dennis Petersen. Her previous teachers include David Kellett, Elizabeth Bishop, and Dr. Wendy Zaro-Mullins.

Outside of opera, Sara is passionate about film and ceramics. She is currently an associate producer on a new documentary directed by Wendy Sachs and Nimrod Erez.

(6/2026)