Béatrice Uria Monzon

Béatrice Uria-Monzon spent her formative years in her native town of Agen. With her Baccalauréat safely under her belt but not yet sure about her future course of study, she decided to give herself time to reflect and enrolled for a further final year at the Saint-Jean Lycée in Lectoure. The music-loving director of the Lycée, P. Gardeil and one of the teachers, R. Fornerod, who directed a choir there, introduced her to singing in which she clearly excelled …

After studies in Art History and a year at the Bordeaux Conservatoire, she enrolled at the Centre National d'Artistes Lyriques (CNIPAL) in Marseille in 1984. She took further advanced musical training at the l’École d’Art Lyrique de l’Opéra national de Paris and rapidly made her debuts in the major French opera houses. Lyon, Toulouse, Aix-en-Provence, Nancy, Marseille and others welcomed her in a varied repertoire.

1993 marked a turning point in her career with her debut in the role of Carmen in J-L Gomez’s new production at the Bastille Opera, where her interpretation distanced her straight away from the standard hackneyed performances usually associated with the character. She revived the role on both the national and international stage : the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Miami Opera, the Teatro Regio in Turin, Arènes in Verona, the Orange summer festival “Chorégies d’Orange”, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Houston Grand Opera, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and the Teatro Real in Madrid.

After this she tackled the Italian repertoire, playing Leonora in La Favorita and Eboli in Don Carlo. She sang her first Dalila at the Zurich Opera, then took the role of Béatrice in Béatrice et Bénédict in Nancy, Tours and Bordeaux, Giulietta in Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Chorégies d’Orange, La Scala in Milan, the Teatro Real in Madrid and the Opéra national de Paris. Her repertoire now also included Massenet’s heroines : Hériodade, whom she played on the stages of Saint-Etienne and Avignon, Dulcinée (Don Quichotte) at the Paris Opera and Charlotte (Werther) at the Opéra de Lyon. Other roles in the French repertoire tackled include la reine Gertrude in Hamlet (Thomas) at the Liceu in Barcelona, Julie in Fiesque (Lalo) at the Montpellier Festival and Didon in Les Troyens at the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg.

During her career she has worked with conductors such as S. Osawa, K. Nagano, A. Jordan, G. Prêtre, M. Plasson, A. Lombard, M-W. Chung, J-C Casadesus, G. Bertini, J. Conlon, M. Soustrot, L. Slatkin, N. Santi, M. Janowski …

Amongst the list of directors appear N. Joël, R. Carsen, H. Kupfer, J-L Gomez, E. Sagi, L. Ronconi, G. Deflo, La Fura dels Baus, C. Roubaud, P. Caurier et M. Leiser, J-C Auvray…

Béatrice Uria-Monzon can often be found performing in recital, with orchestra or piano. Her credits include : French songs by Berlioz, Ravel, Duparc and Fauré, the Spanish repertoire of Granados, De Falla, Montsalvatge and Monpou and in oratorio : the Requiems of Verdi, Mozart and Fauré, and the Stabat Maters of Rossini and Pergolesi.

Béatrice Uria-Monzon continues to enlarge her repertoire with debuts in new roles, both in recent performances and productions programmed for the future. Venus in Tannhauser at the Liceu in Barcelona and at the Opéra national de Paris under the musical direction of Seiji Ozawa, and also Amneris and Judith (Le Château de Barbe-bleue) at the Garnier in Paris, and Santuzza at the Chorégies d’Orange in August 2009.

In the months to come Sara in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux as well as Chimène in Massenet’s Le Cid will enrich her catalogue of new roles.

She will shortly be reviving the roles of Santuzza and Carmen at the Liceu in Barcelona, Eboli in the French version of Don Carlos at the Vienna Staatsoper, Adalgisa in Lausanne and Judith in the revival of Le Chateau de Barbe-bleue at the Opéra national de Paris.