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Faculty & Staff
Saundra DeAthos-Meers

Saundra DeAthos-Meers

Associate Professor, Voice / Opera

Saundra DeAthos has been heralded for the remarkable quality of both her vocal and dramatic presentations. Excelling in a varied and broad repertoire, she began her career as an Adler Fellow and in the Merola Opera Program with San Francisco Opera. Of her San Francisco Opera performances, OPERA Magazine admired, “Saundra DeAthos imparted vulnerability and an elegant soprano.” Accordingly, the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE noted, “Saundra DeAthos delivered a virtuosic performance… a real charmer of a soprano, [she] made one love the character.” SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE confirmed, “Saundra DeAthos nailed all of [her] coloratura flights and showed perfect timing.” She has received rave reviews at Utah Festival Opera for her portrayals of Giorgetta in Il Tabarro and the title role in Suor Angelica. The HERALD JOURNAL states that, “Defying typecasting, soprano Saundra DeAthos plays an unfaithful wife in Il Tabarro and a doomed nun minutes later in Suor Angelica. Ms. DeAthos captures the emotional torment in both roles, and her singing is breathtaking, especially in her tragic aria “Senza Mamma.”

Ms. DeAthos has graced the stages of many outstanding opera companies across the United States. Ms. DeAthos made a stunning role debut as Cio Cio San in Madama Butterfly with the Helena Symphony and reprised the title role once again with Amarillo Opera. The North Texas Performing Arts News described her as “vocally…stunning. She meets the extravagant demands that Puccini makes on his hero without any strain whatsoever. She has a full-throated lyric-verging-on-verismo soprano and can still float a gorgeous pianissimo note at the top of her range. In the final scene, she ate the scenery and left the audience in tears.” Ms. DeAthos also received rave reviews for her portrayal of Micaëla in Carmen with Denyce Graves for Opera ��ϳԹ��. Of her heart-rending performance as Micaëla, ��ϳԹ��’s POST AND COURRIER exclaimed, “Soprano Saundra DeAthos, who played Micaëla, possessed a beautiful, sweet tone and made you want to shake some sense into José, who might have married her if he hadn’t fallen for the wild gypsy temptress.” The CITY PAPER added, “Soprano Saundra DeAthos melted hearts with her portrayal of Micaëla; her silvery, emotionally naked singing made me cry in her lovely Act III aria.” POST AND COURIER comments that her Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni is “portrayed to great comic effect with her supple voice...she is a woman on the verge. Every time she came reeling onto the stage, DeAthos was a breath of deliciously craven air.”

In addition to her operatic activities, Ms. DeAthos performs regularly with symphony orchestras throughout the United States. Saundra offers a remarkably broad concert repertoire that encompasses Handel’s Messiah and Jeptha, Mozart’s Requiem and Coronation Mass, Dvořák’s Te Deum, Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Poulenc’s Gloria, and Fauré’s Requiem. She was featured in Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem with ��ϳԹ�� Symphony and Chorus for a performance telecast on PBS.

In addition to a successful performance career, Saundra DeAthos has also gained recognition as an educator, a producer, and a director of opera. She currently serves as the Director of Opera and Associate Professor of Voice at the ��ϳԹ��. At the College, she produced and directed Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites and La voix humaine, and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. During the pandemic, she created and produced an outdoor festival as a performance opportunity for CofC Opera students, as well as students in Theatre and Dance, at the ��ϳԹ��’s beautiful 981-acre Stono Preserve. The festival was aptly called “Arts Under the Oaks”. Not only was there a semi-staged performance of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro that she produced and directed, and a Children’s Opera performance of The Three Little Pigs, but as producer, she also oversaw performances of dance and music theatre in collaboration with CofC Theatre and Dance Department. It was a two-day event with an invited, socially distanced, live audience and offered a livestreamed option. Post pandemic, Saundra moved the performances to the main stage at the Sottile Theatre in the Spring of 2022 and established an official collaboration with the ��ϳԹ�� Symphony. At that time, she produced Die Zauberflöte in collaboration CofC Department of Theatre and Dance. In 2023, she produced and directed Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, and in 2025, Giordano’s rarely performed one-act opera, Il Re.

In the Fall of 2025, Saundra will enjoy a sabbatical performing and recording the song cycle, “…and we were the flawless”, she commissioned composer and pianist, Paul Sánchez, to write in collaboration with poet, Marcus Amaker. In January 2026, she will assume the role of Chair for the ��ϳԹ��’s Music Department.

Previously, she spent ten years as the Music Coordinator in the Theatre Department at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. She resides in ��ϳԹ��, South Carolina, with her husband, Harold, and two children, Maggie and Gray.

Headshot by Paul Sánchez.