Cheslak, Sadie

Mezzo-Soprano
(Duluth, Minnesota)

Mezzo-soprano Sadie Cheslak is a first-year Adler at San Francisco Opera, where she performs Mary Seton in Mary Queen of Scots and the Second Maidservant in Elektra. Last March, Cheslak was a winner of the 2025 Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition, receiving the Birgit Nilsson Award of the American-Scandinavian Foundation. She also won first prize at the 2025 Jensen Foundation Vocal Competition, first prize, the Robert Lauch Memorial Award, at the Wagner Society of New York’s 2025 Singers Competition, and first prize at the Vero Beach Opera 2025 Rising Stars Competition. In 2024, she received third prize and the Luana DeVol Prize for the Dramatic Voice at the SAS Performing Arts Vocal Competition, as well as fourth overall and the prize for Most Promising Voice of the Competition at the NATS Artist Awards.

Cheslak was recently a participant with the Merola Opera Program, where she performed the role of La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica scenes. In January 2025, Cheslak covered the role of Madame de la Haltière in Massenet’s Cendrillon with Cedar Rapids Opera as a Smith Young Artist. In 2024, she sang at Wolf Trap Opera as a Studio Artist, where she was featured in excerpts of Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice as Orphée, covered the alto soloist in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, and covered Mrs. Pascal in a workshop of The House of Yes by Kamala Sankaram.

Excelling in contemporary opera, Cheslak has workshopped pieces including p r i s m by Ellen Reid, a 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner and Beth Morrison Projects co-commission, Black Square by Ilya Demutsky, and the title role in The Surrogate by Sky Macklay. Cheslak earned a BM in Voice Performance from Concordia College, her MM in Voice Performance and Literature from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a Post-Master’s Certificate in Voice from DePaul University.