Michelle DeYoung

In the 2022–23 season, renowned American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung’s many engagements include appearances with the San Francisco Symphony, the Houston Symphony, Opera Colorado, and Tulsa Opera.

DeYoung frequently appears with many of the world’s leading ensembles, including the Los Angeles, New York, Royal, and Vienna philharmonic orchestras; the Cleveland, Minnesota, and Philharmonia orchestras; the BBC, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, São Paulo State, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; The Met Orchestra (in Carnegie Hall); The Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble; the Orchestre de Paris; the Bavarian State Orchestra; the Staatskapelle Berlin; and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. She’s also performed at the prestigious festivals of Ravinia, Tanglewood, Aspen, Cincinnati, Saito Kinen, Bayreuth, Edinburgh, Salzburg, Saint-Denis, and Lucerne.

The conductors DeYoung has worked with include Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Sir Colin Davis, Stéphane Denève, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gustavo Dudamel, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniele Gatti, Alan Gilbert, Bernard Haitink, Manfred Honeck, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano, Seiji Ozawa, Antonio Pappano, André Previn, David Robertson, Donald Runnicles, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mariss Jansons, Michael Tilson Thomas, Franz Welser-Möst, and Jaap van Zweden.

DeYoung has also appeared with many of the world’s finest opera houses, including The Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Glimmerglass Opera, La Scala, the Staatsoper Berlin, the Hamburg State Opera, the Opéra National de Paris, the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Opéra de Nice, English National Opera, the Theater Basel, and the Tokyo Opera. She was also the 2015 artist-in-residence for Wolf Trap Opera.

DeYoung’s many roles include the title roles in Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila and Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia; Fricka, Sieglinde, and Waltraute in Wagner’s Ring Cycle; Kundry in Wagner’s Parsifal; Venus in Wagner’s Tannhäuser; Brangäne in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde; Herodias in Strauss’s Salome; Ježibaba in Dvořák’s Rusalka; Eboli in Verdi’s Don Carlos; Amneris in Verdi’s Aida; Santuzza in Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana; Marguerite in Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust; Judith in Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle; Didon in Berlioz’s Les Troyens; Gertrude in Thomas’s Hamlet; and Jocasta in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. She also created the role of the Shaman in Tan Dun’s The First Emperor at the Metropolitan Opera.

In recital, DeYoung has been presented by the University of Chicago Presents series, the Ravinia Festival, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, San Francisco Symphony’s Great Performers series, Cal Performances in Berkeley, SUNY Purchase, Calvin University, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, the Edinburgh Festival, London’s Wigmore Hall, and Brussels’s La Monnaie.

A multiple Grammy Award winning recording artist, DeYoung’s impressive discography includes Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung with Jaap van Zweden and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (Naxos); Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, Symphony No. 3, and Das klagende Lied with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony (SFS Media); Les Troyens with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live!); Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with both Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO Resound) and Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (Challenge Records International); and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon). She release her first solo album in 2018 on the EMI label She recently appeared in The Metropolitan Opera’s special performance of Verdi’s Requiem, which commemorated the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and was broadcast nationally on PBS and released on DVD.

Michelle DeYoung recently launched Ensemble Charité, an organization that aims to support various charities while also fostering young, emerging musicians through community performances of chamber concerts that feature seasoned professional musicians and are conducted by DeYoung.