Mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes has a wide repertory that includes Baroque opera, but she is best known for bel canto roles. She has a substantial recording catalog that includes recital albums on the Zig Zag Territoires and Aparte labels. Deshayes was born on January 25, 1973, in Rueil-Malmaison in northern France. Her mother, Alix Deshayes, was a member of the Pasdeloup Orchestra. Deshayes began studies on the violin. She entered the Sorbonne in Paris and earned a musicology degree there. Deshayes then switched to voice, entering the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSM), studying with Mireille Alcantara. She went on for master's-level studies with Régine Crespin and also studied Baroque opera with conductors Emmanuelle Haïm, Christophe Rousset, and William Christie. Deshayes joined the company at the Opéra National de Lyon in 1998 and won several prizes, scoring a major breakthrough with a first prize at the Voix Nouvelles competition in 2002. Two years later, Deshayes made her recording debut on the Alpha label on a recording of Rameau's Le Berger Fidèle with the ensemble Les Musiciens de Monsieur Croche. During the 2000s decade, Deshayes began appearing in major opera houses. She made her debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 2006 as Siébel in Charles Gounod's opera Faust. In the early 2010s, she developed a specialty in bel canto roles with appearances as Rosina in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Opéra Bastille in Paris in 2012 and as Cinderella in Rossini's La Cenerentola at the San Francisco Opera in 2014; the latter appearance marked her debut with that company. Deshayes appeared in several Baroque opera productions and gave recitals of Baroque music in such prestigious venues as the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Salle Gaveau, and the Opéra Royal du Château de Versailles. Deshayes has recorded for various labels, including Zig Zag Territoires, where she issued the album French Romantic Cantatas in 2014, and Aparte, where she released Rossini in 2016. In 2022, Deshayes appeared in a concert version of Bellini's Norma at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, re-creating a 19th century tradition in which the role of Norma was sung by a mezzo-soprano. By 2023, when she joined conductor Jérôme Correas and the ensemble Les Paladins on the album Mozart: Exsultate, jubilate! on Aparte, her recording catalog comprised some 50 albums. ~ James Manheim, Rovi

Karine Deshayes

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