Soprano Marie Civitarese was born and raised in the small town of Trail, BC. Ms. Civitarese started her classical training at age five under the instruction of Audrey Bisset. At age nineteen, the young soprano moved to New York to study at the award winning Voice and Opera Performance program at the State University of New York at Purchase College. Under the guidance of her voice instructor Bonnie Hamilton, director Jacque Trussel, and coaches Hugh Murphy and Joan Krueger, Marie took on the wonderful and challenging program and graduated with her Bachelors of Music in 2015.

Whilst at Purchase College, Marie studied years of language, diction, and art song literature, as well as performed leading roles in Purchase Opera’s productions. These roles included Gretel and die Taumann (Hänsel und Gretel), Tytania (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), and Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro). After completing her degree, Marie moved to Vancouver to continue her musical education at the University of British Columbia where she graduated with a Masters of Music in May 2017.

At UBC, Marie studied with Canadian sopranos Nancy Hermiston and Marisa Gaetanne. Operatic roles at UBC have included Tytania (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Ciboletta (Eine Nacht in Venedig) and most recently the Foreign Woman (The Consul). Marie has also performed as Papagena in Opera Kelowna’s production of Die Zauberflöte in their 2016 season. Marie has been a soloist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and performed in a concert series in the Czech Republic and Germany with UBC Opera in February 2016. Ms. Civitarese was a grant recipient in the 2015 Schuyler Foundation Career Bridges competition in New York City and has also been awarded by the Young Singers Foundation and the British Columbia Arts Council. Most recently, she was awarded the Scholarship for Advanced Studies in Austria by the Johann Strauss Foundation; Marie is very excited to be travelling to Salzburg this summer to study for a month at the Mozarteum University.