Marie Nicole Lemieux

Born in Québec, Marie Nicole Lemieux's vocal talents were revealed to the public in 2000 when she won the Queen Fabiola and Lied Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium. The beginning of her career is marked by Baroque music, soon evolving into roles in the Italian and French fach. She has since become one of the most sough-after contraltos of her generation. Engagements have taken her to some of the most important houses and festivals in the world, including the Royal Opera House in London, Milan's la Scala, the Vienna State Opera, Opéra National de Paris and the Salzburg Festival, where she sang Azucena ("Il Trovatore") alongside Anna Netrebko and Placido Domingo. Her repertoire includes the title roles in "Orlando furioso", "Giulio Cesare", "Tancredi" and "L’Italiana in Algeri", Dalila ("Samson et Dalila"), Geneviève ("Pelléas et Mélisande"), Orphée ("Orphée et Eurydice"), Hedwige ("Guillaume Tell"), Mrs. Quickly in "Falstaff", Anna ("Les Troyens"), Suzuki ("Madama Butterfly") and Zia Principessa ("Suor Angelica"). She has worked with conductors such as Simon Rattle, Zubin Mehta, Antonio Pappano, Daniele Gatti, Kirill Petrenko, Bertrand de Billy and Marc Minkowski. Recent and upcoming appearances include Sphinx in Enescu's "Oedipe" at the Royal Opera House London, Mrs. Quickly in Vienna and London, Carmen at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Tancredi in Brussels, Storgé in "Jephtha" in Paris and Ulrica ("Un Ballo in maschera") in Zurich. She will make her Wiesbaden debut at the 2018 International May Festival as Ulrica.