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A lyric tenor, crossover vocalist, collaborative pianist, and experienced voice teacher, Sam Krausz has become a respected talent in several cities across the US for one or more of his skills. He is known solely as an operatic tenor in Phoenix, Arizona, where he has enjoyed two seasons as the tenor-in-residence of the Marion Roose Pullin Opera Studio at Arizona Opera. In his original hometown of St. Louis, MO, he is known not only as a tenor who performed with Opera Theater Saint Louis as a Gerdine Young Artist in 2025, but also as a singer/pianist of contemporary music by artists like Billy Joel. And in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sam is a premiere voice teacher and sought-after coach/collaborative pianist with close to a decade of experience preparing pre-collegiate students for BM/BFA auditions and major regional and national competitions. Each of his trades are influenced by an adept musicality and dramatic sense centered around a staunch belief in the power and function of lyric stage performance.

While at Arizona Opera, Sam’s assignments included performing Goro in their 2026 production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, covering the lead tenor roles in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (2026) and Puccini’s La Bohème (2025), as well as performing Count Belfiore in a well-received outdoor English production of Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera (2025). Sam was also able to make his professional musical theater debut in 2025 with Arizona MusicFest’s semi-staged production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel, in which he played Enoch Snow. Arizona’s operatic environment has been a great match for Sam’s vocal style, which is a primarily Italianate technique heavily based upon the golden age ideals of speech-based fullness of projection, a belcanto sweetness of tone, and generous legato phrasing.

Sam’s eduction includes a BM in voice from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, as well as an MM in voice from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. While in Chicago for graduate school, Sam performed several roles including Tamino in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Oronte in Händel’s Alcina, and David in the second-ever production of Jake Heggie’s If I Were You. During the same period, Sam won a district and received a regional encouragement award in the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition and was a national semi-finalist in the Lotte Lenya Competition for vocalists who perform in both classical and musical theater styles. This period also led Sam into his period as a young artist, first with Wolf Trap Opera in 2023 and then with Des Moines Metro Opera in 2024.

Sam owes much of his success as a singer and voice teacher to Karl Resnik, who embraced Sam as a pupil and teaching partner in Cincinnati, OH. Over 7 total years of mentored teaching, Sam gained experienced with close to three hundred students as their team-teacher and pianist, with at least one student entering a major collegiate voice or musical theater program every year - including the University of Michigan, the University of Cincinnati CCM, Penn State University, Oklahoma City University, Oberlin Conservatory, and Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Three students also became National YoungArts winners with distinction.

Sam’s early training began in St Louis, MO as a classical pianist and choir singer since the age of 7. At age 16, Sam joined the Opera Theater Saint Louis Artists-in-Training Program where he began classical voice lessons, and won a silver award the national YoungArts Week during his senior year. Sam also participated in the Muny Teen program at the St. Louis Muny and was highly active as a musical theater performer, actor, and collaborative pianist. Essentially, Sam found a few musical abilities that he had a particular affinity for from a relatively young age and has simply never given up on them, allowing him to stay “in the music” throughout all seasons of his life. He aspires to serve the operatic art form by crafting a multifaceted career that aims to inspire structural improvements in the quality of acoustic theater performance and training.