Speaker Details
HUANG Ying
Lyric Coloratura Soprano and Opera Singer
Huang Ying, renowned lyric coloratura soprano and opera singer, is one of the outstanding Chinese vocal artists who has been active worldwide in opera and concert performances, TV and movie productions as well as recording studios. Her tender and sweet voice, flexible and unassailable technique, authentic musical styles and impassioned stage performances have won accolades worldwide from colleagues, audiences and the media, who hail her as "the nightingale from China."
Ms Huang is the first Chinese vocalist to perform a major operatic role. She first came to international attention at age 27, when she made a sensational debut as Cio-Cio San in Frédéric Mitterrand's 1995 acclaimed feature film Madame Butterfly. Since then, she has appeared in opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels Belgium, Royal Danish Opera, Cologne Opera House, China National Center of Performing Arts, performing major roles in Madama Butterfly, Le Nozze di Figaro, Der Zauberflöte, L'elisir d'amore, Rigoletto, Don Giovanni, Werther, Falstaff, Der Rosenkavalier, Semele, among others. On December 30, 2006, Ms Huang starred in Der Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera, the first in the "Met HD Live" series, which was broadcasted live worldwide. A New York Times review reads: "A lovely, clear-voiced lyric soprano, Ms Huang, in her debut role at the Met, was an alluring Pamina." In 2009, Ms Huang was selected onto the "Wall of Fame" in the Met's 125th Anniversary celebration. Meanwhile, Ms Huang has devoted herself to the cause of Chinese contemporary operas. She has starred in more of these works than any other Chinese vocalist, in Tan Dun's Peony Pavilion and The First Emperor, Guo Wenjing's The Poet Li Po, Zhou Long's Madame White Snake, among others. In April, 2011, Madame White Snake, in which Ms Huang starred in its premiere production, won the Pulitzer Prize.
Ms Huang has also been very much in demand on concert stages, appearing regularly in Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Wiener Festwochen, Cincinnati Music Festival, Beijing International Music Festival and Music in the Summer Air in Shanghai. Concert halls she has appeared include the Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Music Center and the Goldener Saal in the Wiener Musikverein, performing major vocal masterpieces such as Bach's "Wedding Cantata," BWV 210, Handel's Messiah, Haydn's Die Jahreszeiten, Mozart's Coronation Mass, Poulenc's Stabat Mater, Orff's Carmina Burana, Mahler's 2nd, 4th and 8th Symphonies, Richard Strauss's Vier Letzten Lieder, Berlioz's Les nuits d'été, Tan Dun's Bitter Love and Qigang Chen's Iris d' évoilée. Ms Huang has collaborated multiple times with the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the SWR Radio Orchestra, among others, with James Levine, James Conlon, Christoph Eschenbach, Charles Dutoit and John Nelson among their conductors.
As an artist for Sony Classical, Ms Huang has recorded a number of internationally distributed albums including the soundtrack of Madame Butterfly, Operatic Arias with James Conlon and the London Symphony Orchestra, Richard Danielpour's Sonnets to Orpheus, and Bitter Love, a collection of songs composed and conducted by Tan Dun. Her most recent Sony release includes Roger Waters' Ça Ira with Bryn Terfel and Paul Groves.
Ms Huang has been frequently invited to perform on celebration occasions, such as the ground-breaking 1997 Vienna White Christmas concert with Plácido Domingo and Michael Bolton, the Opening Concert of the Shanghai Grand Theatre with José Carreras, the Opening Night of Athens Olympics in 2004, the Celebration Concert marking the success of Shanghai's bidding to hold the World Expo with Andrea Bocelli, the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo (singing the theme Song Ode to the Expo) and the Closing Ceremony of 2011 World Aquatics Championships. After her performance on September 21, 2011 in the Kennedy Center's "China: The Art of a Nation" festival, the Washington Post reviews: "It was soprano Ms Huang's riveting and lustrously sung performance of two gorgeously neo-impressionistic arias from Zhou Long's 2009 opera, "Madame White Snake," that was the highlight of the evening."
