Soprano Lara Bruckmann is a versatile performer whose career has spanned the operatic, concert, and theatrical stages.  She trained at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music (BM) and The New England Conservatory (MM) before moving to San Francisco in 1998.  After a decade in the Bay Area, Lara relocated to Baltimore in the summer of 2009.

While in California, Lara performed roles with San Francisco Lyric Opera, West Bay Opera, Oakland Opera Theater, Cinnabar Theater, New Conservatory Theater, and many other companies.  Her favorite operatic and musical theater roles include Fiordiligi, Miss Jessel (The Turn of the Screw), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte), Arsena (The Gypsy Baron), Dido, Minnie Belle (Weill’s Johnny Johnson), Aldonza/Dulcinea (Man of La Mancha), the Witch (Into the Woods), Rosie (Bye Bye Birdie), Sonia Walsk (They’re Playing Our Song), and Hope (Something’s Afoot). On the concert stage, she has served as soprano soloist for works including Bach’s Mass in B minor and St. John Passion, Handel’s Silete Venti, Rossini’s Messa di Gloria, Bruckner’s Requiem, Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb, and Orff’s Carmina Burana.  

Lara’s extensive experience with newly composed and 20th Century music has brought her into collaboration with sfSound, Volti, Mobtown Modern, and Swiss pianist Eva-Maria Zimmermann to form the duo ChamberBridge, specializing in 20th and 21st Century art song.  The San Francisco-based duo has performed in recital at many Bay Area concert series, including Berkeley Chamber Performances, San Francisco’s Old First Concerts and Noe Valley Camber Series, and at the Waldaukapelle and Konzerte ElfenauPark Series in Bern, Switzerland.

Her cabaret career has included nearly one hundred performances at San Francisco’s famed Plush Room, the premiere of her one-woman show “divagation: an internal cabaret” at the San Francisco Fringe Festival, and four years as a founding member of the group Girlkulture with mezzo-sopranos Darla Wigginton and Ariela Morgenstern and soprano Anja Strauss. 

Lara is a very active music and performing arts educator with a busy private studio.  She has served on the faculties of Lyric Opera of Baltimore’s Opera Camp, San Francisco Community Music Center, Oakland School for the Arts, Oakland Youth Chorus, Children’s Musical Theater of San Jose, the San Lorenzo Unified School District, and Dublin Theater Company.   Lara is co-founder and Board President emeritus of Arts First Oakland.

When not singing or teaching, Lara explores the world with her baby boy Gus, raises and sells carnivorous plant terrariums with her husband Jay, and plays roller derby with the Charm City Roller Girls under the name Doris Day of Reckoning and the jersey #C6.