Praised as “hilarious” and “vocally charming”, Canadian Mezzo Soprano, Tessa Fackelmann, has been seen performing the works of Handel, Mozart and Rossini.  

Tessa begins the 2024-2025 season in a return to Ottawa as the Mezzo Soloist in the Ottawa Choral Society’s presentation of Duruflé’s Requiem. In the winter of 2025, she will make her house and role debut as Cherubino in Sarasota Opera’s production of Le nozze di Figaro, conducted by Louis Lohraseb and directed by Tom Diamond. Tessa will reprise this charismatic role in the spring with Opera Columbus. 

The autumn of 2023 brought Tessa to Dayton, Ohio where she made her Dayton Ballet & Philharmonic debut as Lilith in Austin Jaquith’s Dracula: Bloodlines and as the Alto Soloist in Handel’s Messiah. Her most notable performance of 2024 came in March, when she sang on the Metropolitan Opera stage as a National Semifinalist in the 2024 Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition. During the summer, Tessa completed her second season as an Apprentice Artist with the Santa Fe Opera, covering Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and premiering the role of Ruth in Gregory Spears and Tracy K. Smith’s The Righteous. She also appeared as Angelina from Rossini’s La Cenerentola in the Apprentice Scenes program. 

In the 2022-2023 season, she competed in the Talent Gala with the Opéra de Montréal’s Atelier Lyrique at the Maison Symphonique in Montréal, Québec. Later that year, Tessa made her debut at the Santa Fe Opera under the baton of Lidiya Yankovskaya singing the role of The Kitchen Girl in Dvorak’s Rusalka. In addition, Tessa was also seen as Maria Stuarda in Donizetti’s infamous “Confrontation Scene” in the apprentice scenes programme.  

Previously, as a studio artist at Wolf Trap Opera, she made her mainstage debut as The Bridesmaid in their 2022 production of Der Freischütz. Tessa is an alumnus of Manitoba Opera’s Digital Emerging Artist Program (2021) and Opera NUOVA (2019).  

She received a Master of Music (2023) from Rice University under the tutelage of Nova Thomas and her Bachelor of Fine Arts (2019) and Artist Diploma (2020) from the University of Ottawa with Professor Christiane Riel.  

In her spare time, Tessa enjoys rollerblading, traveling, watching hockey, karaoke and water colour painting (even though she isn’t very good at it).