YING FANG / KEN NODA

Ying Fang admits it herself: Mozart made her an opera singer. As a student at the Shanghai Conservatory, the singer took part in a production of The Marriage of Figaro that changed her life. As she puts it herself: ‘Mozart’s music is heaven to me. His imagination, purity, virtuosity, passion, innocence, and darkness are so rare and unique. (…) It’s like a balm for my voice’. One Mozart role in particular is second nature to her: ‘Susanna is smart, fun, reliable, strong, sympathetic, and she’s got real guts!’, she adds. An implicit portrait of the soprano, a New York resident since her studies at the Juilliard School, who should not, however, be confined to the Classical repertoire alone, so fully does her rich and masterfully subtle voice blossom in Haendel, of whom she is also a leading interpreter. The Verbier Festival discovered her early: in 2016, Ying Fang made her Festival debut as Nannetta in Verdi’s Falstaff alongside Bryn Terfel, before dazzling the Salle des Combins with an unforgettable Lauretta in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. This evening, alongside pianist Ken Noda with whom she works regularly at the Met in New York, Ying Fang sheds all the light of her timbre on Canteloube’s marvellous Songs of the Auvergne and on pieces by Strauss, which seem tailor-made for her radiant voice.