Sara Chiesa

Sara Chiesa is a Music Director, Vocal Coach, Pianist, and Educator. She is a Detroit native and Crossover Specialist.

Sara’s international MD credits include work with New Opera Singapore, L’Opéra de Montréal, Vienna Summer Music Festival, the Prague International Piano Masterclasses, and her ongoing summer work in Urbania, Italy with FIO Italia.

Some regional MD and AMD highlights include Mean Girls (City Springs Theatre Company); Always… Patsy Cline, Oklahoma!, and Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story (Highlands Playhouse); The Secret Garden, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and The Pirates of Penzance (Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre); Side by Side by Sondheim, Rigoletto, I am a Dreamer who No Longer Dreams, and Roméo et Juliette (Resonance Works in Pittsburgh) as well as work with Arizona Opera, Detroit Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Fresno Grand Opera, Opera Modesto, Opera Omaha, Opera Saratoga, Syracuse Opera, Virginia Opera, and her beloved hometown company, Opera de Metro Detroit.

At the collegiate level, Sara has loved working alongside students as their MD or AMD to help them find their professional footing in a variety of productions including L’Étoile, Alcina, Putting it Together (Carnegie Mellon University); Don Giovanni and La Navarraise (West Texas A&M University); Hansel and Gretel and Uncovered (Utah State University); and Rent (Oklahoma City University). Some favorite cabaret/concert credits include The Ginger Bess Band Halloween Jazz Cabaret (Don’t Tell Mama) and YES! The Musical (Ponyboy OKC).

Coming up this season, Sara will be the Music Director for Tantrum Theater’s 2027 production of Cabaret, and then she will return to City Springs Theatre Company in May 2027 as the Music Director for Grease.

As a Vocal Coach, Sara has worked with Kelly Marie Tran (Star Wars: The Last Jedi & The Rise of Skywalker, Raya and the Last Dragon) and Peppermint (Broadway’s Head Over Heels, RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9), as well as with many other beloved students and talented artists at the university and professional levels.

As a Pianist, Sara has been working professionally since 1999 when she was paid $10 to play for her middle school friend’s oboe solo at the Solo & Ensemble competition in Detroit, Michigan. In addition to countless collaborations since then, a particularly proud moment came during the pandemic when Sara was asked to be the Pianist/Coach/Audio Engineer for the recording project The Black Composer Speaks – a collection of songs by black composers that were never or rarely recorded. The recording includes selections from a newer publication titled An Anthology of African and African Diaspora Songs, and it is available through Classical Vocal Reprints.

As an Educator, Sara has previously been on the faculties of Carnegie Mellon University, the Wanda Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University, Molloy University, and Utah State University. Additionally, she presented at the 2026 National Opera Association (NOA) Conference on the topic of “Musical Theatre for Today’s Opera Singer and Pianist: Practical, Artistic, and Professional Considerations.”

As a queer artist, it is particularly meaningful for Sara to be able to share queer stories authentically on stage. One queer career highlight is when she had the privilege to be the Assistant Music Director/Head Coach in 2022 for the Utah State University world premiere of Uncovered, a lesbian abortion drama set in the Hasidic community written by the brilliant composer Lori Laitman and librettist Leah Lax based on Leah Lax’s memoir Uncovered.

Some other notable achievements include being on the Nickelodeon show Double Dare as a kid and memorizing all of the lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” as an adult.

As a new Assistant Professor of Instruction and the Music Director for the Musical Theater program, Sara is thrilled to begin her time in Athens. When she isn’t running rehearsals, you can catch her walking everywhere.