Nancy Yuen (Soprano)Born in Hong Kong and based in the U.K. and Singapore, Chinese soprano Nancy Yuen, a top graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, London, has made Cio-cio-san (Madama Butterfly) her signature role winning great international critical acclaim. She made her operatic debut immediately upon graduation in this demanding Puccini’s title role with the Welsh National Opera and has since repeated the role all over the world, notably with the English National Opera, West Australian Opera, Opera Queensland, Opera Northern Ireland, Singapore Lyric Opera, the 1994 New Zealand International Festival of Arts, the 1995 Barbados Opera Festival and the Royal Albert Hall production by David Freeman for Raymond Gubbay Limited in 1998, 2000 and 2003.
Other operatic roles include Romilda (Xerxes) with the English National Opera; Violetta (La Traviata) with the Welsh National Opera, Singapore Lyric Opera and London City Opera; Aida with Kentish Opera and Dublin Lyric Opera Productions; Gilda (Rigoletto), Tytania (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Rosalinda (Die Fledermaus), Nedda (I Pagliacci), Siok Imm (Bunga Mawar), Leonora (Il Trovatore) and the title role of Tosca with the Singapore Lyric Opera; Liza (The Queen of Spades) with Kentish Opera; Mimi (La Boheme) with the London City Opera; Jenny (Mahagony Songspiel) with Theatre d’Evreux, Micaela (Carmen) with the Hong Kong Urban Council Opera; Pamina (The Magic Flute) with Opera Queensland and Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) and Liu (Turandot) with Bangkok Opera.
Equally at home on the concert platform, she has a wide recital and concert repertoire ranging from Baroque to contemporary and performs regularly at the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Barbican Concert Hall and Birmingham Symphony Hall in the U.K. and abroad in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia. The many orchestras she has sung with include the London Mozart Players, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Tivoli Symphony Orchestra and most recently the West Australia Symphony Orchestra. Notable musicians she has worked with include, Placido Domingo, Carlo Rizzi, Richard Armstrong, Trevor Pinnock and Christopher Hogwood. She has also recorded for the BBC, Radio Television Hong Kong and Radio FM, New Zealand. She has performed the soprano solos in the Messiah, Creation, Seasons, Nelson Mass, Christmas Oratorio, Carmina Burana, Elijah, Monteverdi’s Vespers, Mozart’s Requiem and Mass in C Minor, Poulenc’s Gloria, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Brahms’, Faure’s and Verdi’s Requiem, Mahler’s 4th Symphony and Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass.
In recent years, special operatic roles have been written for Nancy’s unique lyric soprano voice. In the 2005 Singapore Arts Festival, she sang the role of Princess Han Li Bao in the world premiere of operatic cantata Zheng He, specially written for her by Law Wai Lun, commissioned by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. In the same year she also repeated the title role of Mae Naak with Bangkok Opera, a coloratura role created for her by Somtow Sucharitkul in 2003. In 2006 she sang Sita, the second operatic role written for her by Mr. Sucharitkul in his opera Ayodhya.
Last year she made her role debut as the Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro with Singapore Lyric Opera, performed Pamina with Bangkok Opera, sang soprano solos in Haydn’s Seasons, Mozart’s C Minor Mass and Coronation Mass and gave recitals in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Spain and the U.K. Highlights in 2007 includes appearing as one of the soloists at the Singapore National Day Celebration Ceremony, singing two new pieces of music specially commissioned for her beautiful voice, which is to be broadcasted nation wide. Since July 2003 Nancy has been the Co-ordinator of Vocal Studies at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.
Ms Yuen will be performing in the coming Opera Production “Turandot” by Singapore Lyric Opera.
“But it was Nancy Yuen’s singing of the Countess’ two show-stopping arias, Porgi Amor and Dove Sono, which stole the show. While clearly mindful of the need to fulfil the demands of the Mozartean singing line, she still managed at the same time to make both arias a moving and heartfelt expression of a wife’s suffering. Among even the greatest interpreters of the role in the history of opera, one would be hard put to find such an ability to imbue both these arias with the feeling they cry out for” – The Straits Times, July18, 2006.
“Mae Naak … Though she could deftly negotiate spans of more than an octave in a single phrase, Yuen was often more effective on a single pitch, investing each moment with a range of timbre that communicated on the surface an exquisite emotional depth.” – Opera Magazine, January 2006
“Zheng He – Admiral of the Seven Seas – world premiere ….. Nancy Yuen’s exquisite soprano voice created a beautiful and brave Princess Han Li Bao” – The Business Times, June 21, 2005.
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