The French soprano Mélissa Petit was born in Saint-Raphaël and studied singing in her home town and in Nice, before beginning her career in 2010 as a member of the Hamburg State Opera International Opera Studio. After three years at the Opera Studio and two as a freelancer she joined the ensemble of the Zurich Opera House in 2015, singing roles such as Sophie (Werther), Marzelline (Fidelio), Ännchen (Der Freischütz) and Créuse in Charpentier’s Médée.
In 2017 Mélissa Petit resumed a freelance singing career, in which she has enjoyed great success in various principal roles including Micaëla (Carmen) and Gilda (Rigoletto) at the Bregenz Festival, and Juliette (Roméo et Juliette) at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing and at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf. She has appeared as a guest artist at the Paris Opéra in the roles of Giannetta (L’elisir d’amore) and Papagena (Die Zauberflöte). In 2019 she performed Aricie in Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie in a co-production between the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Zurich Opera House.
In 2019 she won third prize in the Paris Opera Competition, which opened the doors to various French opera houses for her. In 2021, for example, she sang Anna in a concert performance of Boieldieu’s La Dame blanche in Limoges; she returned there in January 2023 to perform the role in a staged production.
Mélissa Petit made her Salzburg Festival debut at the 2021 Whitsun Festival as Bellezza (Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno) and in a concert performance of La clemenza di Tito as Servilia – a role that she had previously sung in Zurich and Monte Carlo, and has since sung on a tour with Cecilia Bartoli to some of Europe’s most prestigious concert halls. In September 2022 she made an acclaimed role debut in the title role of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen at the Theater an der Wien.
Future projects include her return to the Theater an der Wien as Juliette, her role debut as Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier) at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and her house debut at the Berlin State Opera as Ilia (Idomeneo).
