Jump to: navigation, search
Danielle de Niese (b. 1980) is an Australian-born, soprano now residing in the United States of America, of Sri Lankan and Dutch heritage.
After winning a number of singing competitions at an early age in her native Australia, Ms. de Niese and her family moved to Los Angeles where she made her professional operatic debut at the astounding age of 15 with the Los Angeles Opera. The precocious progression of her career continued as she became the youngest singer ever to participate in the Young Artists Studio at the Metropolitan Opera where she debuted at the age of 19 as Barbarina in a new production of Le Nozze di Figaro directed by Jonathan Miller and conducted by James Levine. She was subsequently asked to perform the title role in the Met's production of Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges.
Ms. de Niese's still growing career has ranged through early baroque music (Poppea in L'incoronazione di Poppea), via Handel, Mozart (Susanna, Despina) and contemporary opera premieres at major opera houses around the world, to Broadway (Les Misérables) and film (the 2001 Hannibal movie) roles.
She has recently achieved acclaim in productions of a number of Baroque operas on stage and on DVD. Danielle de Niese has appeared in the Les Arts Florissants productions of Les Indes Galantes by Jean-Philippe Rameau, and as Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare by George Frideric Handel, directed by David McVicar, at Glyndebourne in 2005 and 2006.
At the end of the Mozart year 2006 the Dutch Opera in Amsterdam staged the three Da Ponte operas directed by Ingo Metzmacher. Danielle sang Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro and Despina in Cosi fan tutte with great success. Danielle has just signed an exclusive recording deal with the Decca Music Group.