Praised for her “innate artistry,” Dallas-based soprano Samantha Dapcic brings a “significant strength, beauty, and versatility” to the stage. Experienced in opera, musical theater, and art song repertoire ranging from Monteverdi to Harbison, she is establishing herself as a dynamic and multifaceted performer.
In 2021, Samantha worked with Das Blümelein Project and AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Elevator Project to stage direct a world premiere of A Lily Among Thorns—her operatic combination and reordering of John La Montaine’s Songs of the Rose of Sharon and Fragments from the Song of Songs. During the first half of the show, she was also featured as Jane Seymour in DBP’s collaborative music video of Libby Larsen’s Try Me, Good King: The Last Words of the Wives of King Henry VIII.
Samantha’s operatic performances include the title roles of Suor Angelica and Dido as well as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Contessa Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Liù c.v. in Turandot, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, Giulietta in Les contes d’Hoffmann, Nerone in L’incoronazione di Poppea, Nora in Vaughan Williams’s Riders to the Sea, and Geraldine in Barber’s A Hand of Bridge.
Recently on the concert stage, she made her debut with the McCall Music Society (McCall, ID); Chelsea Opera (New York, NY); Lewisville Lake Symphony Chamber Series (Lewisville, TX); and the Abilene Philharmonic Orchestra (Abilene, TX). She has been a featured soloist in Harbison’s Mirabai Songs, Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, Ticheli’s Angels in the Architecture, Vaughan Williams’s Hodie, as well as Bach’s Cantata 36, and Handel’s Messiah. Samantha was also featured soloist with Vox Peregrini in Dublin, Ireland.
Samantha’s affinity for 20th and 21st century American works has inspired collaboration with composers and chamber musicians on premieres of new works including: Benjamin Shirey’s Transient Delete, Ermir Bejo's Catullo Songs, Qi Shen’s Summer Moonlight, Brad Robin’s Limud, Larry Reed’s My Heart and I, Pan Xingzimin’s Three Sarcastic Songs, and Amber Zingler’s Particles. Recently she was invited to perform Thomas Kotcheff’s Cecila Speaks for UNT’s First Annual CollabFest.
Samantha is a 2019 winner of the Lewisville Lake Symphony International Voice Competition as well as a 2019 winner of Mobile Opera’s Madame Rose Palmai-Tenser Competition. In 2014, she was named a winner of the University of North Texas Concerto Competition, as well as the recipient of the Robert B. Toulouse Fellowship—a highly competitive university-wide program that was created to recruit the very best graduate students.
Samantha recently graduated with her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Voice Performance and Pedagogy from the University of North Texas, where she studied with Carol Wilson and served as a Teaching Fellow in Voice from 2016-2019. She earned her MM and BM in Voice Performance from the University of Northern Iowa, where she studied under Jean McDonald and was also awarded a Graduate Teaching Assistantship in Voice. Samantha is a National Center for Voice and Speech-trained Vocologist. She received further stage experience and training at Opera NEO (San Diego, CA) and the Amalfi Coast Festival (Amalfi, Italy).