MAYA
VOICE
VILLANUEVA
A light lyric soprano, Maya Villanueva puts her voice at the service of many aesthetics, from the Baroque and Mozartian repertoire to the 20th century, including French melody and the Spanish-American repertoire. She also defends, on stage and on record, the music of today's composers.
In April 2022, she played the role of Zélime in La Caravane du Caire by André Modeste Grétry at the Grand Théâtre de Tours under the direction of Stéphanie-Marie Degand. In May 2018, she created the title role of Benoît Menut's opera Fando et Lis at the Opéra de Saint-Étienne (dir. Daniel Kawka). She also collaborated with Michaël Levinas during the creation of his latest opera Le Petit Prince (understudy of the title role).
In 2019, she was the soloist for Suzanne Giraud's Enfants du Marais based on a tale by and with Pascal Quignard, created with the Orchestre Philharmonique and the Maîtrise de Radio France, in partnership with France Culture.
She also sings the roles of Barbarina (Mozart, Le Nozze di Figaro, Opéra en Plein Air), Florentine (Caccini / Cavalieri, La Pellegrina, Opéra de Dijon), Drusilla (Monteverdi, L'Incoronazione di Poppea), Amour (Gluck, Orphée et Eurydice), Suzanne (Mozart, Le Nozze di Figaro), Elisa (Mozart, Il Re Pastore).
In the summer of 2022, she went on tour in Peru and sang in recital at the National Theater of Lima with the Symphony Orchestra, as well as in Arequipa for a recital with pianist and composer Fernando Valcarcel at the North American Cultural Center. Her recitals also took her to Trondheim (Norway), La Scala Paris, the Royaumont Festival, Paris Salle Gaveau, Salle Cortot, Saintes Festival, Mercredis Musicaux de l'Opéra de Lille, Chaillol Festival, Beauvais International Festival, Rencontres Musicales Internationales Georges Enesco, Nancyphonies…
Her discography has been praised by the press: ****Classica, 4 clés Opéra Magazine, *****Pizzicato... It includes the complete melodies for voice and piano by Alberto Ginastera (2016, Klarthe Records), the Chansons de Prévert & Kosma (2015, Anima) as well as the melodies of Claude Debussy in a double CD with the Quintette Syntonia (2018, Klarthe Records) and the music of Gabriel Sivak (La Patience, 2019, Klarthe Records). She records the melodies of Benoît Menut with Syntonia and the cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand for her monographic disc Les Îles (2020, Harmonia Mundi). Her next opus with the pianist David Saudubray will be devoted to the melodies of Manuel de Falla (autumn 2022, Klarthe Records).
Born in Paris and of Peruvian origin, Maya comes from a family of artists. She began music by learning the violin and piano, then joined the Maîtrise de Radio France at the age of ten. There, she acquired a solid musical training and sang under the direction of conductors such as Seiji Ozawa, Kent Nagano, James Conlon, Charles Dutoit… She then studied at the CRR in Paris while following a course in Spanish/Latin American Literature, Language and Civilizations at the University of Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle), before being admitted to the CNSM in Paris. She received advice from Sophie Hervé and Jean-Philippe Lafont and completed her training by learning baroque with Nicolau de Figueiredo, Leonardo García Alarcón, Andreas Scholl and worked on melody and lied with Patrick Cohen, Maciej Pikulski, François Le Roux, Jeff Cohen and Christian Ivaldi.