The French soprano Mélissa Petit grew up in Saint-Raphaël and studied singing in her home city and in Nice, before beginning her career in 2010 as a member of the Hamburg State Opera’s 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 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 of 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. For example, in 2021 and 2023 she appeared as Anna in Boieldieu’s La Dame blanche in Limoges.
Mélissa Petit made her Salzburg Festival debut at the 2021 Whitsun Festival as Bellezza (Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno) and as Servilia in a concert performance of La clemenza di Tito, both under Gianluca Capuano. She has also sung Servilia in Zurich, Monte Carlo and on a tour with Cecilia Bartoli. Other recent successes have included the title role in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen and Juliette (Roméo et Juliette) at the Theater an der Wien, her role debut as Sophie in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, her house debut as Ilia (Idomeneo) at the Berlin State Opera and her returns to the Salzburg Festival in 2023 as Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and to the Bregenz Festival in 2024 as Amenaide (Tancredi).
Highlights of the 2024/25 season include Servilia (La clemenza di Tito) and Freia and Woglinde (Das Rheingold) at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo and Angelica (Orlando) at the Opéra National de Lorraine, the Théâtre de Caen and the Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg.
