Vittoria Yeo

Born Yeo Jiwon in Seoul on 20 December 1980, Vittoria Yeo took her first degree in vocal performance in her home city, at Seokyeong University, and then moved to Italy: a diploma from the Arrigo Boito Conservatory in Parma, further study at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, and finally the Vecchi-Tonelli Institute in Modena, where she worked with Raina Kabaivanska and graduated with the highest marks. Lady Macbeth came first, at the Ravenna Festival in 2013 and at Savonlinna in 2016; then Salzburg, where she sang Elvira in Ernani under Riccardo Muti in the summer of 2015 and, two years later, the title role of the festival's new Aida. The Verdi heroines are the spine of the repertoire — Aida, Desdemona, Leonora, Odabella, Amelia, Giovanna d'Arco, Lida and Elvira — with Cio-Cio-San, Mimì, Liù, Norma and Adriana Lecouvreur beside them. She sang the Verdi Requiem under Muti with the Chicago Symphony in 2018 and with the Berlin Philharmonic at Baden-Baden in 2019, and Mozart's Requiem at the Arena di Verona in 2020. Fiordiligi came to her at the Aphrodite festival in Cyprus in 2014 and at the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona in 2021, and Cio-Cio-San took her to the ancient theatre in Plovdiv in 2020, to the Teatro Comunale in Modena in 2022 and to the Rome Opera in 2023. In 2022 she sang the Verdi Requiem in Burgos Cathedral with the chorus and orchestra of the Teatro Real in Madrid.