Bridget Esler

Bio

Praised for her “enchanting and expressive singing” (Henley Standard) and her “buoyant charm as an actor,” (Georgia Strait), Vancouver-born soprano Bridget Esler is currently a young artist at the Opéra de Montréal’s Atelier lyrique. Bridget has performed across Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States with ensembles including the London Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.

In the 2025-2026 season, Bridget makes roles debuts as the Governess in The Turn of the Screw (Atelier lyrique), Barena in Jenůfa, and Zerlina (cover) in Don Giovanni (Opéra de Montréal). In April, she will tour a program of vocal chamber music to some of North America’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, with the Marlboro Music Festival’s popular touring program.

In the 2024-2025 season, she made her Opéra de Montréal mainstage debut as Berta in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Other highlights of her season include role debuts as Monica in The Medium (Orchestre classique de Montréal) and the Nightingale/Shepherdess in L’Enfant et les sortilèges (Opéra de Montréal), Joyce DiDonato’s renowned series of masterclasses held at Carnegie Hall, the Gerda Lissner Competition’s Winners’ Recital, also held at Carnegie Hall, and a return to the Marlboro Music Festival, dubbed “the classical world’s most coveted retreat” (The New Yorker), where she has previously collaborated with musicians including Jonathan Biss and Lydia Brown.

Bridget is a keen chamber musician and recitalist, with a special interest in contemporary music; she has sung several world premières by composers including John Harbison and David Palmer, and she champions the works of twentieth- and twenty-first-century composers in her repertoire. Recent new music performance highlights include Lukas Foss’ Time Cycle at the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, Unsuk Chin’s Cantatrix Sopranica with the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and an appearance at the Opera America New Works Forum in New York City.

Experienced on the competition circuit, Bridget was awarded Third Prize at the 2024 Gerda Lissner Foundation Song Competition, named Most Outstanding Canadian Musician at the 2024 Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition, and performed as a semifinalist in the 2025 Lotte Lenya Competition.

She enjoys a busy schedule as a concert soloist, with recent engagements including Carmina Burana (Amchor), semi-chorus in Elijah (London Symphony Orchestra), Mozart’s Mass in C Minor (Islington Choral Society), and Messiah (Kimbolton School).

She is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Schulich School of Music at McGill University and has undertaken further training at the VSO School of Music, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Samling Institute, and the Oxford International Song Festival.

Bridget is the recipient of support from the Hnatyshyn Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund, the Josephine Baker Trust, the Art Song Foundation of Canada, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Adelaide E. Alexander Memorial Scholarship.