Toronto-based mezzo-soprano Ellita Gagner has been praised for having a "gorgeous, warm tone and winning gamine personality" (Gianmarco Segato, La Scena Musicale). She has been seen in the roles of Cendrillon (Cendrillon, UofT Opera), L'Enfant (L'Enfant et less Sortileges), Lysistrata (Lysistrata, UofT Opera), Hansel (Hansel and Gretel, GoodMess Opera), Dorabella (Così fan tutte, Opera Nova Scotia/Brott Festival), Announcer (Gallantry, UoT Opera), Peep Bo (The Mikado, UWOpera), Tisbe (La Cenerentola, Brott Festival), and Iphigenia (Disobedience, UoT Opera). She has workshopped the role of Gabby for the Royal Swedish Opera’s Melancholia by Mikael Karlsson and librettist Royce Vavrek, and Mimi in scenes from Indians on Vacation by Ian Cusson and Royce Vavrek. Ellita was a young artist with Manitoba Opera in the 2022 DEAP program where she created the short film, Love Songs to the Piano.

Outside of operatic repertoire, Ellita sang as Alto soloist in Handel’s Messiah with the Uxbridge Messiah Singers and Orchestra in 2022, and in concert with the London Community Orchestra as their concerto competition winner in 2019. Ellita holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Western Ontario where she studied with acclaimed mezzo-soprano Patricia Green, and is a graduate of the Opera School at the University of Toronto, where she studied under renowned Canadian soprano and pedagogue, Lorna MacDonald. In August 2024, Ellita was an Equilibrium Young Artist at the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance (LAMP) studying 20th century chamber music under Barbara Hannigan. In the 24-25 season will see her return to Uxbridge as the Alto soloist in their Messiah, and as a Rebanks Fellow at the Glenn Gould School performing in recital and as the title role in L’Enfant et les Sortilèges.