Sofia Alexandra Cepa Escobar Ferreira da Silva (born November 29, 1984) is a Portuguese soprano singer and actress. She is best known for being part of the cast in West End musicals, in London. She performed the role of Maria in ''

West Side Story ''West Side Story'' is a musical conceived by Jerome Robbins with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Inspired by William Shakespeare's play '' Romeo and Juliet'', the story is set in the mid ...

''. Her most acclaimed role was

Christine Daaé Christine Daaé is a fictional character and the female protagonist of Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel '' The Phantom of the Opera'' and of the various adaptations of the work. Erik, the Phantom of the Opera and Viscount Raoul de Chagny both fall ...

, the lead character in

Andrew Lloyd Webber Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948), is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 21 musical ...

's ''Phantom of the Opera''.

Early life

Sofia Alexandra Cepa Escobar Ferreira da Silva was born on November 29, 1984 in

Guimarães Guimarães () is a city and municipality located in northern Portugal, in the district of Braga. Its historic town centre has been listed as a UNESCWorld Heritage Sitesince 2001, in recognition for being an "exceptionally well-preserved and ...

Braga Braga ( , ; cel-x-proto, Bracara) is a city and a municipality, capital of the northwestern Portuguese district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality has a resident population of 193,333 inhabitants (in ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of th ...

. She studied at Conservatório de Música do Porto in

Oporto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropo ...

, Portugal, and continued her studies at the

Guildhall School of Music and Drama The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a conservatoire and drama school located in the City of London, United Kingdom. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz ...

. She had a scholarship that paid for her tuition. Her parents could not afford her studies in London, and took out a mortgage on their house to pay for her studies. Sofía worked as a waitress in a restaurant near the school after classes for 5 pounds an hour, until 2am.

Career

Television

She was on the Portuguese TV series ''

Morangos com Açúcar ''Morangos com Açúcar'' (lit. ''Strawberries with Sugar''; distributed internationally as ''Sweet Strawberries'') is a Portuguese teen drama. It was broadcast daily on the Portuguese TV station TVI between 30 August 2003 to 15 September 2012. ...

'' in 2003, as Professor Olívia Matos for 42 episodes. In 2009 Escobar was a judge on the Portuguese TV show ''Quem é o Melhor?''. Between 2015 and 2016, she was a jury member on ''

Got Talent Portugal ''Got Talent Portugal'' is a ''talent show'' adapted for Portugal from the original British show '' Britain's Got Talent''. The show travels the country in search of people with new and diverse talents: magicians, ventriloquists, singers, orat ...

''.

Theatre

Escobar's first experience in the West End musicals was with '' The Phantom of the Opera'', after having been the lead understudy actress in 2007 and 2008. She played the lead Hanna Gzelak character in the Portuguese musical ''Scents of Light''. She performed in the ''

'', taking the role of Puerto Rican girl Maria. From 2010 to 2013 she played the role of

, the leading character in ''The Phantom of the Opera'' at

Her Majesty's Theatre Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre situated on Haymarket in the City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established t ...

in Haymarket, London. She is one very few non-native English speakers to have portrayed Daaé in an English-language production. In 2016 she was part of the cast in the new Portuguese musical ''Eusébio'', a tribute to the Portuguese footballer, that made it to the stage on April 6. She subsequently was in the play ''Entre o Céu e a Terra''. In 2018 she played Mary Cullen in '' El médico''.

Music

On October 6, 2012, she performed a duet with Spanish tenor

José Carreras Josep Maria Carreras Coll (; born 5 December 1946), better known as José Carreras (, ), is a Spanish operatic tenor who is particularly known for his performances in the operas of Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini. Born in Barcelona, he made his de ...

in her hometown, invited by him.

Personal life

On September 21, 2013 she married the Spanish actor, Gonzalo Ramos in an intimate ceremony in

. On March 6, 2014, she gave birth to the couple's first child, a boy, whom they called Gabriel Ramos Escobar.

Awards and nominations

Escobar won the "Best Actress in a Musical" award for by the Whatsonstage Theatregoer's Choice Awards while a performer in ''West Side Story''. She has been nominated in the best actress category for the

2009 Laurence Olivier awards The 2009 Laurence Olivier Awards were held in 2009 in London celebrating excellence in West End theatre by the Society of London Theatre. Winners and nominees Details of winners (in bold) and nominees, in each award category, per the Society of ...

due to her performance of Maria in ''West Side Story''. She got a Portuguese

Golden Globe The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in both American and international film and television. Beginning in 2022, there are 105 members of ...

nomination for Revelation of the Year 2010, where she sang " Think of Me" from ''The Phantom of the Opera''.

References

External links

Sofia Escobar bio at the Phantom of the Opera website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Escobar, Sofia 1984 births Living people Musical theatre actresses People from Guimarães Portuguese expatriates in England 21st-century Portuguese women singers Portuguese film actresses Portuguese television actresses