Praised by Opera News for her “unusually rich and resonant” voice, contralto Sara Couden is a premiere interpreter of operatic, orchestral, chamber, and song repertoire. She will open the 2024-2025 season with her San Francisco Opera debut as Rita in Poul Ruders’ THE HANDMAID’S TALE, followed by a role debut as Jezibaba (RUSALKA) with Pacific Northwest Opera and appearances with the St. Louis Symphony and Eureka Symphony as the Alto Soloist in Händel’s MESSIAH.

Her latest triumphs include a return to the Metropolitan Opera to cover Mrs. Sedley (PETER GRIMES), her debut appearance in recital at the Manchester Music Festival and a role debut as Baba the Turk (THE RAKE’S PROGRESS) with Lakes Area Music Festival, as well as company debuts with the Philadelphia Orchestra as Mother/Chinese Cup/Dragon Fly (L’ENFANT ET LES SORTILÈGES), the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as the Alto Soloist in Julia Perry’s STABAT MATER, the Seattle Symphony in Händel’s MESSIAH, the California Symphony in songs by Mahler, and the Eureka Symphony in Mozart’s REQUIEM. Ms. Couden also recently released her debut solo album, the Complete Vocal Works of Artur Schnabel, on the Steinway & Sons label. 

Highlights from previous seasons include Ms. Couden’s debut with the Metropolitan Opera as Tetka (JENUFA) and Albine (THAÏS), as well as a return to Carnegie Hall as the Alto Soloist in Karl Jenkins’ STABAT MATER and a return to the Met to cover Erste Magd (ELEKTRA) and Marta and Pantalis (MEFISTOFELE). She also made role debuts as Dryade (ARIADNE AUF NAXOS), Ottavia (L’INCORONAZIONE DI POPPEA) and Nurse in Dukas’ ARIANE ET BARBE-BLEUE with West Edge Opera, Juno (SEMELE) and Marquise de Berkenfeld (LA FILLE DU RÉGIMENT) with St. Petersburg Opera, Ruth (PIRATES OF PENZANCE) with Winter Opera St. Louis, Israelitish Man (JUDAS MACCABAEUS) with Philharmonia Baroque, Ormindo (ERMELINDA) with Ars Minerva, Dejanira (HERCULES) at the Staunton Music Festival, and Testo in Stradella’s LA SUSANNA with Heartbeat Opera and Opera Lafayette. Meanwhile, she toured Japan with Maestro Masaaki Suzuki in Bach’s B MINOR MASS, sang Third Lady (DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE) with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and appeared as the Alto Soloist in Mahler’s SECOND SYMPHONY with the Santa Cruz Symphony, Händel’s MESSIAH with the Grand Rapids Symphony and Tucson Symphony Orchestra, and Beethoven’s NINTH SYMPHONY with the San Francisco Symphony, Tucson Symphony, Charleston Symphony and Charlotte Symphony. 

Ms. Couden is a graduate of the Lindemann Young Artist Program at the Metropolitan Opera and an alumna of the Marlboro Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Music Academy of the West, and the Institute for Young Dramatic Voices. She holds a M.M with Honors in Opera from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and an A.D. in Early Music, Chamber Music, and Oratorio from the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music.

DUKAS | Ariane et Barbe-Bleu | West Edge Opera | Jonathan Khuner, cond. 

“Contralto Sara Couden, hitherto known to Bay Area audiences only in Baroque repertoire, turned out to be an equally majestic interpreter of French Impressionism.” – San Francisco Chronicle

“a vital, fearless performance…[sung] with splendid, shining authority” - San Francisco Classical Voice

Julia PERRY | Stabat Mater | Cincinnati Symphony May Festival | Juanjo Mena, cond. 

“ Perry’s setting was extraordinary, with tone painting in the orchestra that was descriptive of pain, anger, and the weeping mother….For the contralto soloist, Sara Couden, it was a powerful work with craggy vocal line that wept, mourned, leaped, and cried out to the heavens. In her festival debut, Couden could not have been a better champion for this music. Her performance was both mesmerizing and emotional.” – Cincinnati BUsiness Courier

FRESCHI | Ermelinda “Ormondo/Clorindo“ | Ars Minerva | Jory Vinikour, cond. 

“The huge range and organ-like voice of contralto Sara Couden….the unexpected vocal standout of this cast…[she] proved to be a versaile, adept musician with a flair for comedy. Her upper and mid ranges were pure velvet while her lowest tones were strong, well shaped, and astoundingly beautiful.” – Broadway World

“The delivery and distinctive character of the voices proved to be the evening’s most gratifying pleasure. Couden, a contralto with a strikingly wide range, gave the single strongest performance as Ormondo/Clorinda. Whether conveying faux madness or ardor, Couden employed her fascinating instrument expertly. Solid at the bottom and full of mobile colors higher up - now quavering, now rawly exposed, now humbly hushed - her voice animated the character’s rapid-fire oscillations. Ormondo’s lovestruck lament at the darkest hour was the emotional peak. Here, with an aching, spare simplicity that brought Handel to mind, Couden sent Ermelinda aloft.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

HANDEL | Judas Maccabeus “Israelitish Man” | Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra | NIcholas McGegan, cond. 

“Sara Couden deployed her huge and fluid mezzo-soprano to glorious effect in a range of vocal showcases - now tender and probing, now extravagantly athletic. One aria, “So rapid thy course is,” drove the audience into such convulsions of delight that applause burst out before the aria was even over.” – San Francisco Chronicle

TELEMANN | Canary Cantata | Music@Menlo

“For charm and a sense of goofiness welcome in Menlo’s solemn precincts, nothing could outdo contralto Sar Couden’s performance of Telemann;s Canary Cantata. Secular cantatas on unlikely subjects were a Baroque specialty; Bach’s Coffee Cantata is the most famous. This one is a funerary lament for a dead pet canary. Telemann pours all the pathos of early Italian tragic opera into his music. This is transmuted to bathos by the libretto’s intense devotion to the tiny subject of mourning. Couden milked this contrast with avidity, pouring audible sobs and wails into her deep, thick-toned voice, backing it up with grieving facial expressions and gestures of futility…The lament is varied with outbursts of anger at the culprit for its death…the cat that ate the canary for breakfast.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

SULLIVAN | The Pirates of Penzance “Ruth”  | Winter Opera St. Louis | Scott Schoonover, cond. 

“Equally remarkable…is the performance by Sara Couden as Ruth, the pirate’s “maid-of’all-work” and Frederic’s childhood nurse. Miss Couden wields a lovely, strong contralto, her diction is crystalline, and what a comic sense! She’s almost a head taller than most of the pirates, and rather powerfully built. Asll this lets her pretty much capture any scene she’s in. “ - Broadway World

STRADELLA | Susanna “Testo” | Opera Lafayette/Heartbeat Opera

“Created for a castrato, the role is given to the extraordinary contralto Sara Couden, who displayed a brazen chest voice and butterfly legato phrasing in the role, as well as impressive vocal agility.” – Washington Classical Review

MOZART | Die Zauberflote “Third Lady” | Music Academy of the West | Warren Jones, cond. 

“Sara Couden, in the often unremarked role of Third Lady, offered a powerful contralto that provided an unusually rich and resonant foundation for the trio of harmonizing women.” – Opera News

TIPPETT | A Child of Our Time | Berkeley Community Chorus & Orchestra | Ming Luke cond. 

“a powerhouse quartet of soloists…Couden gave conviction to her meditations” – The Reverberate Hills

ALMA MAHLER | Five Songs | The California Symphony | Donato Cabrera, cond.

Alma Mahler’s Five Songs received the most exquisite performance….The singer was the powerfully voiced and vividly expressive contralto Sara Couden, who brings extra intensity to any assignment she undertakes. She gave each of these songs, from the emotionally yearning “Laue Sommernacht” (Warm summer’s night) to the coy and coquettish “Bei dir ist es traut” (With you, it is comfortable), a character of its own. They have a more direct and folkish air than Gustav’s songs, particularly “In meines Vaters Garten” (In my father’s garden), which is emphatically strophic in verse if less so melodically.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

CD Review : Artur SCHNABLE Complete Vocal Works with Jenny Lin, piano

“the vocal part demands excellence inthe low range and a firm understanding of the Symbolist text, which involves a dream of death and athankful awakening from it.Couden and Lin make a first-rate case for all this music, and if Schnabel will always be remembered more for his pianism than his compositions, this disc shows that when as well-performed as they are here, his songs have something to offer that goes beyond his exceptional keyboard prowess – Transcentury

In her performances of the Schnabel lieder on this disc,Sara Couden engages her own formidable abilities....these become her songs, and she sings them with insights unique to her journey….The evolving emotions of ‘Dann’ are limned by contralto and pianist with dauntless directness, and the contrasts between ‘Manche Nacht’ and ‘Waldnacht’ are intensified by the lightness of Lin’spianism and the shadows that darken Couden’s vocalism.Ideally partnered by Lin’s mercurial playing, Couden’s patrician phrasing lends ‘Dieses ist einrechter Morgen’ particular persuasiveness….The vocal power at Couden’s command is heard in her traversals of the seven Lieder of Schnabel’s Opus14, their words extracted from works by Eichendorff, George, and Storm....‘Abendständchen’and ‘Abendlandschaft,’ two of his most affecting songs...receive two of this recording’s finest performances. The wistful serenity of Couden’s voicing of ‘Hyazinthen,’ facilitated by Lin’swondrously Impressionistic playing, is supplanted in ‘Heisst es viel dich bitten?’ by apprehensive sobriety. These artists ensure that the gravitas of ‘Die Sperlinge’ does not become morose, never permitting tension to eclipse tenderness….​​Compelling in every selection, Couden’s expressivity in theNotturnois incredible. – Voix des Arts