Australian/British soprano Samantha Clarke was the winner of the 2019 Guildhall Gold Medal and prize winner in the 2019 Grange International Festival Singing Competition. Samantha studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, as a Sir John Fisher Foundation and Independent Opera Scholar, under the tutelage of Mary Plazas. She is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama Opera School as a Baroness de Turckheim Scholar, Help Musicians, Tait Memorial and Countess of Munster Trust Scholar and studied with Yvonne Kenny.
In addition to the 2019 Guildhall Gold Medal, Samantha is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Leverhulme Royal Northern College of Music Award, the Dame Eva Turner Award and the Michael and Joyce Kennedy Award for the singing of Strauss.
In the 2025/26 season Samantha returns to Opera Australia as Euridice (Orfeo ed Euridice), and is Artist in Residence with the West Australian Opera where she will make role debuts as Juliette (Roméo et Juliette) and Tatyana (Eugene Onegin). Her concert engagements include The Creation with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/Eivind Aadland and on tour with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Václav Luks, Waldvogel in concert performances of Siegfried with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Simone Young, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Carter and Messiah with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sofi Jeannin. Later in 2026, she performs Mozart’s Requiem, Mendelssohn's Elijah and Woglinde (Götterdämmerung) in concert with Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Her operatic roles include: Violetta (La traviata), Fiordiligi (Cosi fan tutte), Helena (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Countess (Le Nozze di Figaro), Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress), The Governess (The Turn of the Screw) and the title role in Theodora.
Recent and future engagements include Countess (Le nozze di Figaro) at Garsington, Fiordiligi (Cosi fan tutte) with English National Opera, the Seiji Ozawa Music Academy in Japan, Grange Festival and Opera Queensland, Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare) and Theodora for Pinchgut Opera, Woglinde (Das Rheingold), Marzelline (Fidelio) and Mendelssohn’s (Midsummer Night’s Dream) with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Simone Young, Violetta (La traviata) with The Grange Festival, Opera Australia and West Australian Opera, a US tour with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra, Messiah and War Requiem with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 in Tasmania and Britten’s Les Illuminations with Western Australia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Edward Gardner.
Samantha features on the Resonus label’s recording Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs with accompanist Dylan Perez.