Pretty Yende

From Piet Retief in Mpumalanga, where she was born in 1985 and came to opera as a teenager, Pretty Yende went to the South African College of Music, graduating cum laude, and on to the Accademia Teatro alla Scala. Competitions did the rest: first prize at the Hans Gabor Belvedere in Vienna in 2009, the Bellini competition in 2010, Operalia in 2011. Her Metropolitan Opera debut came in January 2013 as Adèle in Le comte Ory, and the bel canto and French roles followed at La Scala, the Paris Opera, Covent Garden and the Vienna State Opera — Lucia, Violetta, Rosina, Adina, Marie in La fille du régiment and the heroines of Les contes d'Hoffmann. Two Sony Classical albums, A Journey and Dreams, appeared in 2016 and 2017. In May 2023 she sang Sacred Fire at the coronation of King Charles III. Her first appearance with the La Scala company itself was as Berenice in Rossini's L'occasione fa il ladro. Beside the stage work stands a concert and recital life that takes in orchestral songs of Richard Strauss and Mahler's Fourth Symphony.