Opera Singer
Mireille Lebel is a Canadian-born opera singer based in Berlin, Germany. Her voice is a lyrical mezzo with soprano colour in the high notes.
Biography.
Lebel was born in Calgary, Alberta and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. As a child, she trained in classical dance for nine years. She went on to study singing at the University of Toronto and the Université de Montréal. Following her studies she received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Jacqueline Desmarais Foundation for Young Canadian Opera and was awarded a place on the Opéra de Montréal's Atelier Lyrique artist-in-residence program. She was a prize winner in Canada's Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques Competition, and was subsequently offered a position in the Theater Erfurt's ensemble in Thuringia, Germany in 2009. Since leaving Theater Erfurt in 2014, she has been making critically successful debuts with opera companies and orchestras across Europe and North America.
She notably performed as a soloist on the Boston Early Music Festival's 2015 Grammy Award winning recording of Charpentier’s "La descente d'Orphée aux enfers". Lebel has also appeared in the Czech Republic with the Prague State Opera, in France with the Aix-en-Provence Festival, in the USA with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and in Canada with Toronto's Opera Atelier and Tafelmusik, Quebec's Les Violons du Roy, and the Vancouver Opera, amongst others. Her performances have included the title roles in Bizet's "Carmen", Rossini's "La Cenerentola (Cinderella)", and Gluck/Berlioz's "Orphée et Eurydice", along with Cherubino in Mozart's "Le nozze di Figaro" ("The Marriage of Figaro"), and Sesto in Mozart’s "La Clemenza di Tito" ("The Clemency of Titus"), plus roles in contemporary operas such as Ana Sokolovic's "Svadba" ("Marriage") and Hèctor Parra's "Wilde". While living in Europe, she prepared for each role by having several sessions with her teacher, renowned soprano Marie McLaughlin.
Lebel sustained a serious burn injury in 2018 during the rehearsal period for Monteverdi’s "Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria" with Opera Atelier in Toronto. Following several surgeries at the Ross Tilley Burn Center at Sunnybrook Hospital, she managed to sing the entire run of the opera.
In 2020, when live performances were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lebel put on a solo streaming production of Francis Poulen's "La voix humaine" for the Vancouver Opera. In 2021, she sang the title role in the Vancouver Opera’s all-female production of "Orfeo ed Euridice".
Future seasons for Lebel include leading operatic roles (notable debuts include Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier with Joana Mallwitz) as well as close collaborations with contemporary composers such as Samy Moussa, Ana Sokolovic, and Stacey Brown.
Discography.
Album Appearances
References.
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