Margherita Maria Sala is the First Prize winner of the Cesti International Singing Competition 2020 where she also received the Audience Award and the Special Prize from the Festival Resonanzen at the Vienna Konzerthaus.
Born in Lecco, Margherita began her musical education as a child under the guidance of her parents, both musicians. Besides early training in violin, she studied singing in the polyphonic vocal group “Famiglia Sala” composed of the seven members of her own family.
In 2017 she graduated in Choral Conducting from the Accademia Biennale di Formazione per Direttori di Coro in Bellinzona under the guidance of Marco Berrini.
More recently, Riccardo Muti had invited Margherita Maria Sala to sing, with his Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, both Vivaldi’s Magnificat in Lourdes and Loreto and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater in Jesi and Ascoli Piceno.
She made her Théâtre des Champs-Elysées debut in 2021 with Handel’s Oreste alongside Franco Fagioli and under the baton of Maxim Emelyanychev and has since returned to take on the roles of Bradamante in Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso and Aristea in L’Olimpiade by the same composer, both with Jean-Christophe Spinosi.
Margherita is a regular guest of the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik where she sang, with the complicity of Alessandro De Marchi, Pasquini’s Idalma, the Italian version of Handel’s Messiah and Vivaldi’s Olimpiade she also performed for the Theater an der Wien, for the Opéra de Nice and for the Moscow Tchaikovsky Concert Hall under Federico Maria Sardelli. She returned to Innsbruck for the Festival’s 2024 edition starring as Cornelia in Giacomelli’s Cesare in Egitto under Ottavio Dantone.
Other past highlights include Emilio de’ Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di anima et di corpo in a Giovanni Antonini/Robert Carsen production at the Theater an der Wien, Handel’s Rodelinda (Bertarido) at Theater Kiel and Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno di Ulisse in patria (Penelope) for the Festival Monteverdi in Cremona. Margherita made her debut with Akamus led by Francesco Corti in the rarity Merope by Domenèch Terradella at the Staatsoper Berlin, Theater an der Wien, Teatro Real Madrid and Liceu Barcelona.
Margherita Maria Sala has further appeared in concert, singing Messiah in Versailles and Barcelona, La Resurrezione with Concerto Copenhagen for the Wiener Konzerthaus and Aci, Galatea e Polifemo for the Handel Festival in Halle. Add to this Vivaldi’s Gloria and Bach’s Magnificat under the baton of Gianluca Capuano for the Festival Bach in Lausanne, and Mozart’s Requiem alongside Václav Luks for the Rudolfinum in Prague and La Seine Musicale.
In the 2025/2026 season, Margherita will celebrate her house debut at both the Frankfurt Oper as Lavinia in a Václav Luks/R.B. Schlather production of A Steffani’s Amor vien dal destino and at La Fenice in the title role in Vivaldi’s Ottone in villa.
She will team up with Giulio Prandi and his Orchestra Ghislieri for a series of concerts dedicated to the 300th Death Anniversary of Alessandro Scarlatti including the Ambronay Festival and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and will reunite with Akamus in Berlin for Marc’Antonio in Hasse’s Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra.
