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.
On the occasion of the 105th death anniversary of Jules Bugmein, she performed and recorded the world premiere of his comic opera La Secchia rapita led by Aldo Salvagno at the Auditorium Verdi in Milan; this was issued on CD by Dynamic.
More recently, Riccardo Muti has 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.
Other past highlights include Emilio de’ Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di anima et di corpo in a Giovanni Antonini/Robert Carsen production at Theater an der Wien and Monteverdi’s Orfeo in an Ottavio Dantone/Pier Luigi Pizzi production at Ravenna Teatro Alighieri.
Margherita Maria Sala has further appeared in concert, singing Messiah conducted by Franco Fagioli in Versailles and Barcelona, La Resurrezione (Cleofe) with Concerto Copenhagen for the Wiener Konzerthaus and Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (Galatea) 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.
In the 2024/2025 season, Margherita will star as Bertarido in Handel’s Rodelinda at Theater Kiel and will team up with Václav Luks for Mozart’s Requiem at Prague Rudolfinum and Paris La Seine Musicale.
With the complicity of Ottavio Dantone, she will have performed as Cornelia in Giacomelli’s Cesare in Egitto at the Innsbruck Festival and as Ericlea in a Pier Luigi Pizzi production of Monteverdi’s Ritorno di Ulisse in patria at Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna.
Margherita will make her debut with Akamus led by Francesco Corti in the rarity Merope by Domenèch Terradella at Staatsoper Berlin, Theater an der Wien, Teatro Real Madrid and Liceu Barcelona.
