– Born 1985 in a remote town in South Africa, Pretty Yende was first introduced to operatic music at the age of sixteen when hearing the Flower Duet from Delibes’s opera Lakmé in a British Airways commercial. At that moment she decided to become an opera singer.
– First artist in history to win first prize in every category of the International Belvedere Competition (2009) and prizewinner at Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition (2011), again in all categories.
– International breakthrough at her sensational Metropolitan Opera debut at the age of 27 in 2013.
– Each track on Pretty Yende’s debut recording celebrates a milestone of her extraordinary musical journey.
Pretty Yende, a rising star soprano with a modern fairy-tale story, releases her debut album A Journey on Sony Classical. Available September 16, this recording has been a joyful labor of love for Yende, as it celebrates the milestones in her extraordinary musical journey, rising to the top of the opera world with unparalleled speed.
Yende was born in 1985 in the small remote town of Piet Retief, about three hundred miles from Johannesburg. At the age of sixteen, her life was transformed by hearing the “Flower Duet” from Delibes’s opera Lakmé on a British Airways television commercial. On learning that this haunting music was opera, she decided at that moment to abandon her plans to become an accountant and train to become an opera singer instead. Soon she gained a scholarship to study at the South African College of Music in Cape Town with Professor Virginia Davids, the first black woman to appear on opera stages during the apartheid years in South Africa. With Davids’s help, Yende’s extraordinary talent blossomed and she was taken from a childhood in a remote village in South Africa to all of the major opera stages of the world.
Besides the much-loved Lakmé duet (performed with mezzo Kate Aldrich) which first opened her heart to the world of opera, her debut recording includes the touching scene “Vous que l’on dit” from Rossini’s Le Comte Ory. In this opera, Yende gained dazzling international recognition when she replaced Nino Machaidze and starred opposite Juan Diego Flórez at her last-minute Metropolitan Opera debut in New York in January 2013. Her appearance in Le Comte Ory was received with rapturous acclaim and became a major turning-point in her career. “Her voice has a luminous sheen combined with steely resolve … she delivered some of the most difficult coloratura passages with scintillating precision,” said The New York Times. Immediately afterward, she stepped in for an indisposed Cecilia Bartoli in the same role at the Theater an der Wien.
