French-Northern African coloratura soprano, Marie Cayeux was the recipient of a bursary from the International Opera Awards Foundation for the 2023-2024 season and made her debut at Opéra de Monte-Carlo in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges as the Fire, the Nightingale and the Princess. This summer, Marie is covering the role of Waldvogel in Siegfried for Longborough Opera Festival and singing Ida and covering Adele in Die Fledermaus for If Opera Festival. Next season she will be debuting at Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège as the Fée de Noël in Marco Taralli's Le Château enchanté.

 

Marie was a member of the Alexander Gibson Opera School in Glasgow for the seasons 2021-2023 as well as a recipient of the Sybil Tutton Opera Award and the Hamilton Duval Music Foundation Scholarship. In 2022, she won the 3rd Prize and Audience Prize at the Hurn Court Opera Competition and the 2nd Prize at Arles International Opera Competition. 2023 saw two critically acclaimed role debuts for Marie, as Louisa (A Feast in the Time of Plague, Cui) and The Maid (Four Sisters, Langer).

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"As in last month’s L’etoile, the French soprano Marie Cayeux was outstanding in portraying the vivacious Louisa." "...the immensely promising Marie Cayeux as the Maid, who with her capriciousness and comic acting is another star." (Read full review here.)

"...soprano Marie Cayeux almost stole the show with the Maid’s anti-New York song." (Read full review here.)

"...French soprano Marie Cayeux having the best of the rest of the score. Cayeux also had the victory role in Four Sisters..." (Read full review here)

"...the singing and sitcom-style comic acting from the principals were superb. But I reserve a special mention for Marie Cayeux. I have seen her now in 3 roles [...]. She has a captivating stage presence and an individual vocal character with a steady vibrato that I find mesmerising [...]. Wow. " (Read full review here)

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After falling in love with opera while performing the role of Juliet in Britten’s The Little Sweep at a young age, Marie gained considerable operatic experience, working with conductors such as Adam Hickox, Philip Walsh, Peter Robinson, Alex Ingram, William Cole, Dominic Wheeler, Cameron Burns, Philippe Forget, Lada Valesova and stage directors Stephen Lawless, Franzisca Severin, Nina Kühner, John Ramster, Dafydd Hall-Williams, Victoria Newlyn, Max Hoehn, BAFTA-winner PJ Harris, Caroline Clegg and Keith Warner. Past roles notably include Kitty (Passionnément, Messager – Festival Lyrique-en-Mer), Papagena (Die Zauberflöte, Mozart – Bloomsbury Opera), Taumann (Hänsel und Gretel, Humperdinck – RCS Opera & Hampstead Garden Opera) and La Princesse Laoula (L’Etoile, Chabrier – RCS Opera). Marie also thrived performing classic lyric coloratura and soubrettes roles during opera scenes: Adina (Donizetti), Despina (Mozart), Adele (Strauss), Elisetta (Cimarosa), Philine (Thomas), Fanny (Rossini), Servilia (Mozart), Marie (Donizetti), Semele (Handel), Zdenka (Strauss), La Fée (Massenet), Constance (Poulenc) and Giulietta (Bellini).   

 

A committed performer of contemporary music, Marie has been singing the roles of Mme Donnadieu in Isabelle Aboulker’s Martin Squelette, First Apple in Jonathan Dove’s The Little Green Swallow, Mrs P. from The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Michael Nyman and The Maid in Elena Langer’s Four Sisters. Furthermore, she sang in the premiere of Geoffroy Colson’s L’esprit du feu at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2018. Most recently she sang the role of Barbara in Philip Hagemann's Roman Fever for Pegasus Opera. Marie is excited to make her debut at Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège next season singing the Fée de Noël in Marco Taralli's Le Château enchanté. Also keen to work with young composers, Marie participated in the 2020-2021 Wigmore Voiceworks, a collaborative project between composers, writers and performers of the Guildhall School. On this occasion, she received the Tracey Chadwell Memorial Award for the Best Performance of a New Work for Voice for her performance of "Between Breaths" by composer Pia Rose Scatterwood and writer Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh (watch performance here).

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Passionate about art songs repertoire, Marie has been learning from renowned collaborative pianists such as Iain Burnside, the late Dalton Baldwin, Sholto Kynoch, Julius Drake, Stacey Bartsch, Eugene Asti, Andrew West, Doriana Tchakarova, Sergei Rybin, Gary Matthewmann, Robin Bowman, Audrey Hyland, Dylan Perez and Malcolm Martineau. In 2021, Marie was honoured to be a Leeds Lieder Festival Young Artist and a semi-finalist of the prestigious Helmut Deutsch International Lied Competition. In 2022, Marie was part of Guildhall’s Song Guild led by acclaimed pianist Graham Johnson and performed at the Milton Court Concert Hall during his concert Poulenc: His Life and Songs. Most recently, Marie performed Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé under the baton of Cameron Burns on the occasion of RCS’ 175th Anniversary Celebrations and “Wir genießen die himmlischen Freuden” as soprano solo in Mahler’s 4th Symphony with the Glasgow International Symphony Orchestra conducted by Magnus Plejdrup.

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Marie is an alumna of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she obtained her Masters in Vocal Performance with Distinction under the tutelage of Professor Rudolf Piernay. She was a Young Artist at the 2019 International Festival Lyrique-en-Mer and a scholar of both the 2020 Lotte Lehman Akademie and the 2022 Oxenfoord Summer School. She holds a Bachelor in Law from Paris Descartes University (Parcours d’excellence).