Danielle De Niese

Danielle De Niese, born on 11 April 1979 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, is an Australian-American lyric soprano whose career has encompassed opera, Broadway, and film. Her parents, Chris and Beverly, had emigrated from Sri Lanka to Australia as teenagers, and De Niese is of Sri Lankan Burgher descent with Dutch and Scottish heritage as well.

De Niese demonstrated exceptional talent from an early age. At nine years old, in 1988, she became the youngest winner of the Australian television talent competition Young Talent Time, performing a Whitney Houston medley and receiving a prize of A$5,000 and a Yamaha baby grand piano, which she has retained. In 1990, her family relocated to Los Angeles, where she became a regular guest host on the television program L.A. Kids, a role for which she earned an Emmy Award at age 16. Her professional operatic debut came at 15 with the Los Angeles Opera. She went on to become the youngest singer ever to participate in the Young Artists Studio at the Metropolitan Opera, making her Met debut in 1998 at age 19 as Barbarina in a new production of The Marriage of Figaro, directed by Jonathan Miller and conducted by James Levine. She pursued her vocal training privately with Ruth Falcon and at the Mannes College of Music in Manhattan.

Her Broadway credit is Les Misérables, in which she appeared in 1987. Alongside her stage work, De Niese has been active in film: Ridley Scott's 2001 production Hannibal includes a scene drawn from Dante's La Vita Nuova in which she performs the song "Vide Cor Meum" by Patrick Cassidy, portraying the character Beatrice.

De Niese rose to broad international recognition beginning in 2005 through her performances as Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, in a production directed by David McVicar. She reprised the role at Glyndebourne in 2006 and 2009, and performed it at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2007 and at the Metropolitan Opera in 2007 and again in 2013. Her Met roles have also included Euridice in Orfeo ed Euridice in 2009, Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro in 2014, Despina in Così fan tutte in 2013, and the title role in Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges. She was additionally asked to perform the title role in the Met's production of that Ravel work following her appearance in Hannibal. Beginning on 31 December 2011 and continuing through January 2012, she appeared as Ariel in The Enchanted Island, a pastiche opera created by Jeremy Sams for the Metropolitan Opera, with the 21 January performance broadcast worldwide as a Met HD transmission.

Her operatic range has extended across Baroque repertoire, Mozart, and contemporary premieres. She sang Poppea in L'incoronazione di Poppea and created the role of Roxane Coss in the world premiere of Jimmy López's opera Bel Canto at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in December 2015. In 2004 she appeared in the world premiere of RAAFF by Robin de Raaff at Dutch National Opera. At the end of 2006, when De Nederlandse Opera staged the three Mozart-Da Ponte operas conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, De Niese sang Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro and Despina in Così fan tutte. In 2009, she made her Covent Garden debut in The Royal Opera's production of Handel's Acis and Galatea, directed by choreographer Wayne McGregor, which was also recorded on DVD. She has appeared in the Les Arts Florissants production of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Les Indes galantes, and her recorded work includes the Glyndebourne Giulio Cesare on DVD.

Further operatic engagements have included Norina in Don Pasquale at the San Diego Opera in March 2012, a role she repeated at Glyndebourne the following year. In November 2013 she portrayed Poppaea in Handel's Agrippina at the Liceu. In 2014 she appeared as the title character in Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto at the Bavarian State Opera, sang Anne Trulove in The Rake's Progress at the Teatro Regio di Turino, and performed the title role in Handel's Partenope at the San Francisco Opera. In February 2015 she sang Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro at the Hamburg State Opera, and in August of that year she returned to Glyndebourne for performances of Concepción in L'heure espagnole and the title role in L'enfant et les sortilèges. In 2017 she made her Australian stage debut as Hanna Glawari in Graeme Murphy's production of The Merry Widow for Opera Australia, with performances at the Arts Centre Melbourne and the Sydney Opera House conducted by Vanessa Scammell. In February 2020 she created the title role in the world premiere of Eurydice, composed by Matthew Aucoin with a libretto by Sarah Ruhl, at the Los Angeles Opera. In 2019 she played Aldonza/Dulcinea in Man of La Mancha with English National Opera at the London Coliseum, opposite Kelsey Grammer as Cervantes/Quixote, Peter Polycarpou as Sancho, and Nicholas Lyndhurst as the Governor/Innkeeper. In May 2023 she sang Giulietta in the West End revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Aspects of Love at the Lyric Theatre, London.

De Niese has released several albums, including Semele (2004), Handel Arias (2008), Raaff (2009), The Mozart Album (2009), Diva (2010), and Beauty of the Baroque (2011), the last recorded with Andreas Scholl and The English Concert conducted by Harry Bicket. In September 2018 she appeared as the castaway on the BBC Radio 4 program Desert Island Discs, selecting Barbra Streisand's "Evergreen" as her chosen track, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby as her book, and a slide projector containing photographs of her loved ones as her luxury item.

On 19 December 2009, De Niese married Gus Christie, grandson of John Christie and chairman of Glyndebourne Festival Opera, in a ceremony at St Bartholomew-the-Great in London. Since their marriage she has lived at Glyndebourne in Sussex, and the couple have two children. In 2015 she was invited to become a patron of the Australian performing arts charity the Tait Memorial Trust. In 2023 she was named number seven on Tatler's best dressed list.