Jenny Daviet

Jenny Daviet is an absolutely outstanding Mélisande, both sensitive and very strong, and sings beautifully. DAGENS NYHETER

With her convincing stage presence, exceptional musicality and versatile repertoire, French soprano Jenny Daviet has made a name for herself both on the opera stage and in the concert hall. She was unanimously praised for her interpretation of Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi with Kent Nagano and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, which was released on CD. A recent DVD production documents another highlight of her career to date: she sang the title role in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in Benjamin Lazar’s new production at the Malmö Opera under the musical direction of Maxime Pascal.

In 2025/26, Jenny Daviet will present a series of exciting contemporary music programmes. She will appear on several occasions with the Ensemble intercontemporain: in November, she performs Berio’s Sequenza III and Héctor Parra’s Orgia in Paris. In the spring, she returns with Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments, marking the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth. She will make her debut at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin with the Boulez Ensemble, conducted by François-Xavier Roth, in Skin by Rebecca Saunders. Other highlights of the season include further concerts with the chamber orchestra Le Balcon and Maxime Pascal, as well as the world premiere of a new work by Christian Rivet at Radio France, which she will perform together with organist Sarah Kim, framed by works by Olivier Messiaen. In the previous season, Jenny Daviet appeared not only in contemporary opera productions such as George Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill at the Festival Ravel and Giorgio Battistelli’s 7 Minuti at the Opéra de Lyon, but also excelled in Mozart: she sang Despina alongside Thomas Hampson in Così fan tutte with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, as well as the Mass in C minor in Fribourg.

A highlight of the 2023/24 season was another major music theatre project: as Eva in Stockhausen’s Sonntag from the cycle Licht, she could be heard at the Philharmonie de Paris together with his ensemble Le Balcon under Maxime Pascal, having already participated in the performance of the Licht cycle’s Freitag in 2022. Also in 2023, Jenny Daviet gave her Asian debut as Pamina in Mozart’s Magic Flute, which was performed at the National Taichung Theater in a production by William KentridgeIn the same year she was also scheduled to debut as Nadja in Haas’ Bluthaus at the Opéra de Lyon. Other recent operatic highlights include Héro in Berlioz’ Béatrice et Bénédict at the Cologne Opera under François-Xavier Roth, George Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill at the Teatro del Canal in Madrid in collaboration with the Teatro Real, Léna in Saint-Saëns La princesse jaune and Mélisande in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande with the orchestra Les Siècles. She also appeared as Angélique in Hervé’s Les Chevaliers de la table ronde at the Opéra Grand Avignon, in the world premiere of Fernando Fiszbein’s El hombre que amaba a los peros at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and in the role of Countess de la Roche in Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten at the Cologne Opera.

In 2022 Jenny Daviet sang Ligeti’s Requiem for the first time with the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España under David Afkham. Recent concerts also include performances with Thomas Hengelbrock and his Balthasar Neumann Choir and Ensemble at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival with Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem and with Claire Gibault and the Paris Mozart Orchestra with Mozart’s Mass in C minor. She sang Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire at the Opéra de Rouen, Vivier’s Bouchara at the Cologne Philharmonie, and Fauré’s Requiem at the International Rostropovich Festival in Moscow under Kazuki Hamada. A focus of her chamber music work with pianist Alphonse Cemin is the German and French repertoire of the turn of the century; most recently, however, the duo performed music by Messiaen at the Théâtre Athénée.

Jenny Daviet began her musical education as a pianist before joining the Conservatoire Regional Influence de Paris, where she studied under the mentorship of Laurence Equilbey, and commenced her soprano career as a member of the ensemble at the Opéra de Rouen, where she made her debut in numerous roles, including Blonde (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Serpetta (La finta giardiniera), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Second Lady (Dido and Aeneas) and Micaëla (Carmen).

2025/26 season

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