CarlaMaria Rodrigues
Principal Viola
CarlaMaria Rodrigues has been Principal Viola of the San Francisco Opera since 1996. She won her first audition at the age of 23 with the Minnesota Orchestra where she was later appointed Assistant Principal Viola. While serving as the Minnesota Orchestra’s Acting Principal in 1995, she was a featured soloist in Strauss’ Don Quixote with Yo Yo Ma and David Zinman, recorded live on MPR. Since moving to San Francisco, she has been Guest Principal Viola of the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Principal Viola of the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
CarlaMaria continues to have a very active chamber music career. She has performed throughout the world with such artists as Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Hephzibah Menuhin, Rudolph Serkin, Pinchas Zukerman, Steven Isserlis and Daniel Hope. She has toured Europe, South America, Israel and Australia as a member of the Zukerman and Friends’ Ensemble and has been an active participant at numerous Festivals including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Gstaad, IMS Prussia Cove, Aldeburgh, Savannah, Mecklenburg and Schleswig-Holstein. In 2012, she traveled to Italy to work on a recording project of chamber music works by Koechlin and later that year collaborated with Menachem Pressler, Daniel Hope, Lorenza Borrani and the Emerson String Quartet at the Savannah Music Festival. In 2013, CarlaMaria performed the Loeffler songs with Anne Sofie von Otter and later that summer was invited to play Principal Viola with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Graz, Austria. Other engagements have included chamber music collaborations with the Danish String Quartet, another tour with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under the direction of Andras Schiff and an invitation to give a chamber music recital - as a member of the Borrani Trio - and a viola master class at the 42nd International Viola Congress in Porto, Portugal.
As a guest teacher of the Jerusalem Music Center and the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation in Bombay, CarlaMaria continues to solidify her commitment to education. From 2016-2018, she held the position of Adjunct Professor of Viola at UCLA and in 2017, she was invited to be a guest faculty member of the Aspen School of Music. More recently, she has become involved in a training program for young artists called the Euphony Orchestra and Chamber Music Project which is a cooperative of several Universities and Music Institutions in Europe. In 2019, she will participate at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Dolomiti Festival and at the Brahms A Milano Project in Milan. A native of London, CarlaMaria entered the Yehudi Menuhin School at the age of ten and continued her studies in the U.S. at the University of Michigan.