Born in Chicago, Lucy Schaufer studied at Northwestern University and the University of Texas at Austin, where she held a Dr. and Mrs. Ernest C. Butler Scholarship in Opera.

Praised for her “impassioned brilliance” by the Washington Post, she has sung Zerlina for Opera North, Sméraldine for New Israeli Opera, Sesto Giulio Cesare for Opéra de Monte-Carlo, and Ava in the world premiere of Stewart Wallace’s Hopper’s Wife. Winner of the Vocal Prize at the Aspen Music Festival, she has sung at Tanglewood, the Pacific Music Festival and with The New York Festival of Song. As a principal artist in Cologne, her roles included Charlotte, Olga, Fragoletto Les Brigands and Cherubino, and with the Gürzenich Orchestra, conducted by Lawrence Foster, she performed the German premiere of Michael Tilson Thomas’s The Diary of Anne Frank.

In 2001 with Opéra de Monte-Carlo, she sang the role of Erika in a new production of Barber’s Vanessa with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. Her tremendous success in this role has led to invitations to sing Erika in Strasbourg and for The Washington Opera, where Opera News admired her “performance of star quality.” In 2004, she will sing the role for Los Angeles Opera.

She has recorded The Wind Remains by Paul Bowles conducted by Jonathan Sheffer and Kurt Weill’s The Firebrand of Florence with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davies. In 2004, she made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera as the Page in a new production of Salome by Jürgen Flimm, conducted by Valery Gergiev, and as Suzuki Madama Butterfly conducted by Placido Domingo. Other recent engagements include Claire On the Town with English National Opera, Thea in Music Theatre Wales’s new production of The Knot Garden, Erika Vanessa in Los Angeles and Zerlina Don Giovanni, Zeisl’s Requiem Ebraico and Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony with The Gulbenkian Orchestra, Lisbon, conducted by Lawrence Foster. Plans include Cornelia Giulio Cesare in Hamburg, Amastris Xerxes at ENO, Flowermaiden Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera and Cherubino and Hansel in Los Angeles.