SUMMER ENDORSEMENTS FOR TEACHERS START MAY 13th!

Expand your opportunities. Advance your career. Get SET this summer with summer endorsements for teachers.

Arrow

Alumna Soprano Performs in World Premiere of Mayakovsky

Published: April 13, 2021

Alumna Soprano Performs in World Premiere of MayakovskyGreenville College alumna Sarah (Coleman 06) Toth enjoyed recent critical success for her performance in the well-received world premiere opera Mayakovsky by Michael Smetanin and Alison Croggon.

Told against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, the incendiary tale draws from the life of Vladimir Mayakovsky, acclaimed bard of the revolution, whose suicide at age 36 ended a life that singularly mixed self-mockery with martyrdom.

Sarah brought a penetrating dramatic presence to the part of Zveryeva, a role she created and performed last summer with the Sydney Chamber Opera in Sydney, Australia. Reviews were favorable:

  • Clive Paget for Australian arts magazine Limelight wrote, Sarah Toth makes a fierce Zveryeva, spitting out her increasingly blinkered dogmas as the representative of a proletariat intellectually seduced by the party line.
  • Peter McCallum for The Sydney Morning Herald named Toth specifically and her co-performers generally for delivering the story with bright penetrating sound.
  • The Sydney Arts Guide called the casts work piercing, resplendent.
  • David Larkin for Bachtrack called the production an intense operatic experience.

Sarah performs operas, recitals and oratorios internationally. She recently made her Sydney Symphony Orchestra debut at the Sydney Opera House as Vierte Magd and Die Vertraute in Strausss Elektra.

In addition to her various operatic roles, she has performed soprano solos in Mendelssohns Elijah, Handels Messiah, and Orffs Carmina Burana.

Sarah completed a masters of music in opera studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (Australia) and holds degrees in voice from both Greenville College (Illinois) and Ithaca College (New York).

She will return to Greenville College this fall with pianist Elizabeth Goodenough 05 to conduct a master class on Friday, November 7. The pair will give a recital Saturday, November 8, at 7 P.M. in Whitlock Music Center and perform in two worship services at the Greenville Free Methodist Church on Sunday, November 9. First service begins at 8:45 a.m. and second service begins at 10:30 a.m.

See also

Breath and Spirit A Devotional by Sarah Toth

The Reluctant Diva

Photos of Sarah Toth courtesy of Zan Wimberley Photography.

Ready for your next steps?