Fatma Said

Soprano Fatma Said collected major awards throughout her student years and became the first Egyptian vocalist ever to appear at Italy’s La Scala. Warner Classics signed her as a solo artist in 2019. Her first album, El Nour, arrived in 2020 and incorporated Egyptian musical traditions. In 2024 she joined countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński on a new recording of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.

Born in Cairo in 1991, she is the daughter of Egyptian opposition politician Ahmed Hassan Said. She attended a German-language school run by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy of St. Borromeo and soon afterward began private lessons with Neveen Allouba at the Cairo Opera House. Her progress was rapid; within three months she was performing in a Christmas concert. In 2009 she entered the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, where she studied with Renate Faltin and completed both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Toward the end of her studies she started giving recitals and drew notice with her performances at the 2013 Schumann Festival in Bonn.

A scholarship to La Scala’s International Opera Studio brought her to Milan, where she sang Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, K. 620, thereby becoming the first Egyptian to perform on that historic stage. Between 2016 and 2018 she was a BBC New Generation Artist, an appointment that opened doors to the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Shangyin Opera House in Shanghai, and the Berlin Konzerthaus. She has also sung at the International Music Festival in Bad Kissingen, Germany, and the Turgutreis International Classical Music Festival in Turkey, building a repertory that spans Italian, German, and French works.

Alongside several operatic recordings, she released her debut solo album, El Nour, on Warner Classics in 2020; the program featured music by French, Spanish, and Egyptian composers together with Egyptian folk and popular songs. A second, stylistically wide-ranging recital, Kaleidoscope, followed on the same label in 2022. In 2024 she moved to Erato to appear as Amore on Jakub Józef Orliński’s recording of Orfeo ed Euridice.