Hui He

Second prize at Operalia in 2000 and first prize at the Verdi competition in Busseto two years later opened Italy to He Hui, who had already sung her first Aida in 1998, at the opening of the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Born in Ankang, in southern Shaanxi, in 1972, she studied at the Xi'an Conservatory with Rao Yujian and started out as a mezzo — Dorabella in Così fan tutte, Shanghai 1995 — before the voice settled into the lirico-spinto repertoire that has defined her since. Her European debut came in 2003 in Bordeaux as Cio-Cio-San; Vienna followed in 2004, La Scala in 2006, Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera in 2010, Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2012. She was the first Chinese soprano to sing Aida in Vienna, New York and Chicago, and has returned to the part at the Arena di Verona and at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing under Zubin Mehta. Her repertoire runs to about a dozen Verdi roles and as many from the verismo side — Tosca, Manon Lescaut, Leonora — with Cio-Cio-San, sung at the Met across the 2017–18 and 2019–20 seasons, the part most closely identified with her. The Paris Opéra belongs to the same list of houses, and Verona has been her base while her ties to Xi'an have held.