Simran Claire
Mezzo-Soprano
Simran Claire is a Punjabi-Canadian mezzo-soprano from Vancouver, BC. She is currently a member of the McPhee Artist Development Program at Calgary Opera, performing on the mainstage as Olga in The Merry Widow and Flora in La traviata, as well as in the Young Artist productions of The Enchanted Child and The Brothers Grimm. Alongside performance, Simran is keenly interested in creating original work. In 2020, as a member of Pacific Opera Victoria’s inaugural Civic Engagement Quartet, she created Dadima, a short film exploring her identity, heritage and lineage using the framework of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben. Her creative debut was praised as “utterly moving, disorientating in a beautiful way, like uncovering a cultural bias you didn’t know you had,” (Opera Canada). From there, she has created Entre nous, a narrative horror short featuring French mélodie for Good Mess Opera Theatre, and associate directed Against the Grain Theatre’s Sāvitri.
As a performer, Simran was a Young Artist at The Glimmerglass Festival in 2019, and has sung with companies including Pacific Opera Victoria, Vancouver Opera and Opéra Royal de Versailles. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia (BMus, MMus). Simran is the recipient of the Joe Boxer Award (Vancouver Opera), and the UBC Medal in Music, the faculty’s highest graduating award. She has been in productions featured on arte.tv and medici.tv, and profiled by CBC Music, Global TV and Opera Canada. Simran is also a trained bhangra and bollywood dancer, a mentor with the Marigold Music Program, and a self-taught quilter.