Natalie Dessay

Dessay was quickly approached by a number of theatres and subsequently sang Blonde in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Madame Herz in Der Schauspieldirektor, Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos and Zaide at the Opéra National de Lyon, as well as Adele in Die Fledermaus at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

In April/May 1992 at the Opéra Bastille, she sang the role of Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann with José van Dam. The Roman Polanski production was not well received, but it began the road to stardom for her. Soon after her Hoffmann run, Dessay joined the Vienna State Opera as Blonde in Mozart's Die Entführung. In December 1993, she was asked to replace Cheryl Studer in one of the three female roles in a production of Hoffmann at the Vienna State Opera.

After she attended a performance where Barbara Bonney had sung Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier under Carlos Kleiber, she was cast in the same role with another conductor. Blonde in Die Entführung and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos became her best known and most often played roles.

In 1994, Dessay first performed the role of the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute staged by Robert Carsen at the Aix-en-Provence Festival to critical acclaim.[6] In October, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in New York in the role of Fiakermilli in Strauss's Arabella. One on the performances was aired on PBS on 1 November 1995.[7] In 1995, she first sang the title role in Lakmé at the Opéra-Comique. In the same year, she debuted at La Scala in The Tales of Hoffmann.

In 1997 she sang the title role in Stravinsky's The Nightingale conducted by Pierre Boulez and staged by Stanislas Nordey at the Théâtre du Châtelet,[8] and debuted at the Salzburg Festival as the Queen of the Night. She returned to the Metropolitan Opera in September as Zerbinetta[9] and in February 1998 as Olympia.[10] In 1999 she took on the role of Amina in La sonnambula at the Lausanne Opera.[11] She portrayed Morgana in Alcina alongside Renée Fleming at the Palais Garnier, where she later performed in Rameau's Les Indes galantes.

In 2000, Dessay was Olympia in Robert Carsen's new production of The Tales of Hoffmann, premiering on 22 March, at the Opéra Bastille.[12] She portrayed Ophélie in Hamlet at the Théâtre du Capitole in April and the Théâtre du Châtelet in June.[13][14] In June, she performed Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute at the Vienna State Opera[15] and subsequently opened the new Jérôme Savary's production as Olympia at the Chorégies d'Orange.[16] She took up the role of Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in October[17] and then interpreted the Queen of the Night for the last time at Palais Garnier in performances from 27 November to 6 January.[18][19]

She started 2001 by opening La sonnambula at La Scala.[20] In February, she took part in a Vienna-Dresden co-production of Die schweigsame Frau at the Théâtre du Châtelet.[21]

During the 2001/02 season in Vienna, Dessay began to experience vocal difficulties and had to be replaced in almost all of the performances of La sonnambula. Subsequently, she was forced to cancel several other performances, including the French version of Lucia di Lammermoor in Lyon and a Zerbinetta at the Royal Opera House in London. She withdrew from the stage and underwent surgery to remove a vocal cord nodule in July 2002.[22]

In the summer of 2003, she gave her first US recital in Santa Fe. She was so attracted to New Mexico in general and Santa Fe in particular that the Santa Fe Opera quickly rearranged its schedule to feature her in a new production of La sonnambula during the 2004 season.[23][24] In 2004, she also performed her first Italian Lucia at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and first Massenet's Manon at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.[25][26]

In the 2004/05 season, she withdrew from Ariadne auf Naxos at the Opéra Bastille and cancelled concert performances at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. She underwent surgery to remove a polyp on the other vocal cord and began vocal training subsequently.[27]

Dessay returned on stage in a benefit concert at the Opéra de Montréal on 8 May 2005.[28][29] Later in the month, she took part in Haydn's The Creation at the Festival de Saint-Denis.[30] In November she starred in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette as Juliette at the Metropolitan Opera. She withdrew the premiere on 14 November, reportedly ill, but resumed in the following performances.[31][32] In July 2006 she returned to Santa Fe Opera, singing Pamina in The Magic Flute.[33] In September she opened the Paris Opera season in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Opéra Bastille and then performed La sonnambula in concert version at the Opéra de Lyon and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the former of which was recorded and released on CD.[34][35]

The year 2007 saw Dessay premiering Laurent Pelly's production of La fille du régiment at the London Royal Opera House in January and the Vienna State Opera in April.[36][37] She performed the title role in Manon at the Liceu in Barcelona in June/July and opened the season at the Metropolitan Opera in the new Mary Zimmerman production of Lucia di Lammermoor.[38][39] She returned in the same season to sing Lucia again and subsequently reprised in Pelly's production of La fille du régiment.[40][41] She went on performing Lucia at the San Francisco Opera and a joint concert with tenor Jonas Kaufmann at Le Corum in Montpellier as part of the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier.[42][43] In October, she sang Manon at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.[44]

In January 2009 she sang the part of Mélisande in a much acclaimed production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande at the Theater an der Wien.[45][46] On 2 March 2009, Dessay sang the title role in La sonnambula at the New York Metropolitan Opera. It was the first new production of the opera at the Met since Joan Sutherland sang the title role in 1963.[47] She gave her first performance in the role of Violetta in La traviata[48] at Santa Fe Opera on 3 July 2009 in a production by Laurent Pelly. Her husband, Laurent Naouri, appeared as her lover's father, Giorgio Germont.[49]

2012 saw the release of Becoming Traviata, a documentary film about Dessay's role as Violetta in a production of La traviata, directed by Jean-François Sivadier, with musical direction by Louis Langrée. The documentary chronicles the development of the production of Verdi's opera for the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France and subsequently staged for her at the Vienna State Opera.

Dessay announced in an interview with Le Figaro that the title role of Massenet's Manon at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse on 15 October 2013 would be her final operatic performance. Previously she had mentioned plans of taking a sabbatical from opera performance in 2015.[50] She said she intended to continue her performing career as a dramatic actress and chansonnière.[51]

Dessay had collaborated frequently with Michel Legrand in concerts. In 2013, they released a joint album entitled Entre elle et lui.

On 27 November 2015, she sang Barbara's Perlimpinpin accompanied by Alexandre Tharaud at the national tribute to the victims of the November 2015 Paris attacks.[52][53]

In 2016 she released an album inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper, Portraits of America. The concept started by selecting eight French prose poems based on Hopper paintings by the poet Claude Esteban, from his award-winning collection of forty-seven such poems, Soleil dans une pièce vide (Sun in an Empty room, 1991). These were set to music by composer Graciane Finzi, and recording with reading by Dessay. These poems were supplemented by selecting ten additional Hopper paintings, and songs from the American songbook to go with them.[54]

• Time Regained (1999, Jorge Arriagada)
• Joyeux Noël (2006, Philippe Rombi)
• La boîte à joujoux (2007, spoken children's story)
• La petite sirène (2008, spoken children's story)
• Le lac des cygnes (2017, spoken children's story)

• Entre elle et lui (with Michel Legrand) (2013)