Bio/Resume
Welcome to Eliza’s bio page.
Eliza O’Malley- Biography
San Francisco Bay Area soprano Eliza O’Malley has performed leading opera roles throughout Northern California. She has performed the roles of Prokofiev’s Maddalena, Verdi’s Joan of Arc, Romilda (Serse), Luisa Miller, Magda (The Consul), Giulietta (I Capuleti e i Montecchi), Constanze (The Abduction from the Seraglio), Marguerite (Faust), Georgetta (Il Tabarro), Vitellia (La Clemenza di Tito), Tosca, Mimì (La bohème), Cherubini’s Médée, Leonora (Il Trovatore), Fiordiligi (Cosi fan Tutte), Lucia, Desdemona (Otello), Norma, Lauretta (Gianni Schicchi), Micaela (Carmen), Gilda (Rigoletto), Suor Angelica, Violetta (La Traviata), the Countess and Susanna (The Marriage of Figaro), Antigone in Mark Alburger’s Antigone, as well as Nedda (Pagliacci). She sang in the premiere of Peter Josheff’s chamber oratorio Europa and the Bull at UC Santa Cruz composed in honor of her grandmother Mary Holmes.
O’Malley acts as Artistic Director for both her own professional company Berkeley Chamber Opera and the community opera collective Verismo Opera based in Vallejo.
A lover of new music, O’Malley has enjoyed giving a premiere of Josheff’s chamber opera Inferno and singing in an improvised opera on the subject of John Brown by William Crossman. She also sang in a new one-act opera by Jeff Meyers. She has premiered works by Alexis Alrich, Stephen Clark, Allan Crossman, Patrick Dailly, Sheli Nan, Lisa Scola Prosek, Mary Watkins and more.
O’Malley has sung roles with Berkeley Chamber Opera, Verismo Opera, The Handel Opera Project, Goat Hall Productions/San Francisco Cabaret Opera, The Santa Cruz Chamber Orchestra, Oakland Opera Theater, Berkeley Opera, Solo Opera, BASOTI and Capitol Opera Sacramento. She also sang the role of Emma in a workshop production of Khovanshchina conducted by Kent Nagano. She produces and sings in the “Dazzling Divas” nights of opera arias at the Bateau Ivre and a series of monthly Work-in-Progress concerts at the Chamber Arts House in Berkeley, which she helped to found. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, soprano Eliza O’Malley received training in the summer programs AIMS in Graz, Austria, Aspen School of Music, the Wesley Balk Institute and BASOTI as well as at Oberlin College. She earned an M.M. in Voice Performance at Texas Tech University School of Music.
In addition to performing, Eliza teaches voice lessons privately as well as at The East Bay Center for Performing Arts. Her singing students have been awarded professional engagements as well as leading roles in their high school musicals.She has led her students in performances of Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas.
