Karine Deshayes

Mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes maintains an expansive repertory that encompasses Baroque opera yet remains most closely identified with bel canto parts. Her extensive discography features recital releases on Zig Zag Territoires and Aparte.

Born January 25, 1973, in Rueil-Malmaison in northern France, Deshayes is the daughter of Alix Deshayes, a Pasdeloup Orchestra member. She first trained on the violin before enrolling at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she completed a musicology degree. Turning to voice, she entered the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSM) for lessons with Mireille Alcantara, pursued further master’s-level work with Régine Crespin, and studied Baroque opera under conductors Emmanuelle Haïm, Christophe Rousset, and William Christie. In 1998 she joined the roster of the Opéra National de Lyon, collected multiple awards, and achieved a decisive breakthrough by taking first prize at the 2002 Voix Nouvelles competition. Two years later she made her recording debut on the Alpha label in Rameau’s Le Berger Fidèle with Les Musiciens de Monsieur Croche.

Throughout the 2000s Deshayes began performing at leading opera houses. Her Metropolitan Opera debut occurred in 2006 when she sang Siébel in Charles Gounod’s Faust. In the early 2010s she concentrated on bel canto roles, appearing as Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Opéra Bastille in 2012 and as Cinderella in Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the San Francisco Opera in 2014, the latter marking her first engagement with that company. She also took part in several Baroque opera productions and presented Baroque recitals at the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Salle Gaveau, and the Opéra Royal du Château de Versailles. Additional recordings appeared on Zig Zag Territoires with the 2014 release French Romantic Cantatas and on Aparte with the 2016 album Rossini. In 2022 she performed in a concert staging of Bellini’s Norma at the Aix-en-Provence Festival that revived the nineteenth-century practice of assigning the title role to a mezzo-soprano. By 2023, when she joined conductor Jérôme Correas and the ensemble Les Paladins for the Aparte recording Mozart: Exsultate, jubilate!, her catalog had grown to roughly fifty albums.