With a career that has lasted over 40 years, singing with many U.S. opera companies and orchestras, and an early stint as Voice Professor at SUNY Fredonia before moving to Europe, Margaret Chalker is now happily bookending her career as Professor of Voice at the Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam. The bulk of her opera career took place in Germany and Switzerland, where she was a soloist with the acclaimed Opernhaus Zürich for 25 years. She sang with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Hamburg, Hannover, Munich, and Wiesbaden Opera Companies, to name a few and sang at the National Theater of Prag as well as in Salzburg and Graz, Austria. In New York she made numerous appearances at Lincoln Center in the Mostly Mozart Festival. Ms. Chalker has sung with the conductors Christoph von Dohnányi, Franz Welser-Möst, Gerard Schwarz, Rolf Weikert, Fabio Luisi, Nello Santi, Nicholas Harnoncourt and worked with many stage directors including Marco Marelli, Robert Wilson, Ruth Berghaus, Otto Schenk and Grischa Assagaroff.  She can be heard on numerous recordings, such as the Seattle Symphony’s recording of Mendelssohn’s Symphony 2, “Das Lobgesang” or with the MDR orchestra from Saarbrücken in 2 albums of works by Mauricio Kagel and “Die Toten Auge” by D’Albert with the Dresden Orchestra. In 2013 Margaret moved from Zürich to be close to her daughter’s family living in Massena. After 4 years of retirement, she was serendipitously awarded with a teaching position at Crane.