It’s been a rollercoaster year for Pretty Yende.
This time last year the South African opera singer was propelled into the global spotlight after performing at the coronation of King Charles III, dressed in a puff-sleeved daffodil yellow Stéphane Rolland gown and Graff diamonds.
Less than three months later, her mother passed away, prompting the soprano to lose her voice and temporarily put performing on hold. Now, following a triumphant return to the stage last September, Yende is going from strength to strength.
She performed in a gala tribute at the Paris Opera last December to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Maria Callas, and later that month became the first opera singer to be named a brand ambassador for French luxury house Dior.
“Even though 2023 was really, really tough, the beauty of it was the fact that it had also so many incredible milestones,” she says in an online interview from Madrid, hours before performing with American soprano Nadine Sierra at the Teatro Real, dressed in custom Dior haute couture.
The 39-year-old is no stranger to overcoming obstacles. Just days before making history by being the first African singer to perform solo for the coronation of a British monarch, she fell and twisted her ankle on stage and arrived at Heathrow airport in a wheelchair.
“It feels bad to just fail and stay there,” Yende says of her “show must go on” mentality. She credits the example of her mother, who returned to night school after having children in order to complete her education.
“Looking at her life — never giving up, learning to drive late in her life and having her first car — we were all saying, ‘Oh wow, it’s never too late to change something. It’s never impossible to achieve anything,’” she says.
Yende was born in the remote town of Piet Retief in 1985, when apartheid was still in force. She grew up in a township and discovered opera at 16, when she heard the “Flower Duet” from “Lakmé” in a British Airways ad.
“When I first heard those 10 seconds, I felt a joy that was beyond joy, I felt peace that was beyond peace, love that was beyond love — and the first instinct was, how can I share this?” recalls the singer, who at that point was more familiar with church hymns.
She promptly dropped her plans to become an accountant and enrolled at the South African College of Music, going on to win a string of prestigious international singing competitions and graduate from La Scala Academy in Milan. More than a career, she considers opera a spiritual calling.
“It’s really ministering sound, and sound is powerful,” she says. “I also found out that sometimes, even if I don’t have the courage to go on, once I start singing, I myself find healing, I myself find joy.”
As she prepares to make her debut in a series of roles, starting with the title character in Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda” at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples in June, Yende reflects on her trajectory so far, or what she refers to as the #prettyjourney in her regular updates for her 79,000 followers on Instagram.
“This is literally another page because when I started the bel canto journey, the dream was to sing the three queens,” she says, referring to “Maria Stuarda,” “Anna Bolena” and “Norma,” the latter a signature Callas role. “Well, the journey to the queens has just begun.”
Like Beyoncé and her BeyHive, Yende can count on her Pretty Army for support.
“For me, they’re not my fans, they’re my family,” she says. “I call them precious souls because, just because I have the global platform, it does not make your platform and your value as a human being small.”
Though her story may read like a fairy tale, Yende is keen to remain relatable. “When I started using social media, it was not so much about the perfect life and planned life, because my life has not been planned,” she explains. “The story is not a fairy tale. It’s a true story and I’m a real person.”
She cites the example of her breakthrough performance in 2013, when she stepped in as a last-minute replacement to play Adèle in Rossini’s “Le Comte Ory” at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera.
“I hadn’t even sung a note and I fell, and anyone would have been super embarrassed and felt so bad. But I laughed and I said, ‘What am I doing on the floor?’” she recalls. That attitude hasn’t left her, even though she’s since found global acclaim.
“I’m still growing and learning in front of you, failing in front of you,” Yende says. “The sense of humanity is what my social media and my Pretty Army is about.”
That’s why becoming a face of Dior felt especially meaningful. “I’m so grateful for this Dior ambassadorship because a girl out there right now who looks like me, or looks like herself, can also see herself in Dior without being asked to change themselves. It beats the Cinderella shoe,” she says.
It turns out opera divas are not immune to body shaming. “So many of us in the opera industry have been constricted and been, I’m going to use the word ‘shoved,’ into thinking that we should all look this way and the only way of looking right is skinny, skinny, skinny,” she says.
“I hope that this collaboration with Dior can literally be an inspiration to the directors of the opera houses, the directors of operas themselves, to not overlook the differences and the beauty of being uniquely you,” Yende says.
She was told early in her career that to get plum roles, she would have to “starve” herself. “I’ve done it many times, but I suffered,” she reflects, noting that directors often complain of a lack of great voices, but these physical diktats may have something to do with it. “We’ve been robbed of our instruments and our instruments, it’s not just the vocal cords, it’s our bodies.”
Now that she’s at the top of the bill, Yende has more say in her stage costumes. While she’s performed in everything from track pants to a fringed flapper dress, period styles are her favorites, especially from the 19th century.
“Ballgowns! I love ballgowns!” she positively yelps. She traces it back to seeing her first live opera production. “I was literally not only transported by sound, but also visually, and that was such an attraction for me. I was like, ‘Wow, this is an incredible world, I want to be there all the time.’”
She’s less fond of the casual looks that have become more common as opera houses modernize their productions to appeal to younger audiences. “One of the difficult things the first time for me was to wear pants on stage,” Yende says.
Famed for her acting skills, she throws herself into both comic and dramatic roles with total abandon.
“When I play characters that are very, very intense, like ‘La Traviata’ for example, or ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ their stories touch me so much that I find that sometimes, I don’t even know if it’s my feelings or it’s their feelings when the curtain’s gone down,” she says. “I literally forget myself and truly give myself to the music.”
She admits that it makes for an unpredictable experience on stage, but she would rather be sincere than worry about serving clockwork perfection. “I am an honest artist. You know, I’m there. It’s raw. It’s what it is, and the perfection is in the doing,” she says.
Right now, Yende is trying to channel her anger as she prepares for her turn as Mary Stuart. She’s a little worried about a passage in Donizetti’s opera where the 16th century Queen of Scots insults her cousin and rival Elizabeth I by calling her an illegitimate child.
“‘Bastarda!’” she sings out in Italian. “I’ve never said those words. It’s so foreign in my tongue and in my soul.”
Among the other roles she’s about to tackle are Marguerite in Gounod’s “Faust,” Leonora in Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and Magda in Puccini’s “La Rondine.” Yende is also getting ready to perform the “Casta Diva” aria from “Norma” for the first time in another concert with Sierra on May 30 in Dortmund, Germany.
“’Norma’ is ‘Norma.’ And, like ‘Traviata,’ I waited just enough time for me to grow not only artistically, technically, but also as a human being,” she says. “Eventually, the peak of the mountain will be to sing ‘Norma’ in La Scala, for example.”
She and Sierra are preparing to release a concert album on the Deutsche Grammophon label in July, and Yende is also working on her third solo album, which could see her crossing into other genres. “It would be amazing to collaborate with one of my favorite gospel singers, CeCe Winans,” she says, adding that Jennifer Hudson is also on her dream list of vocal partners.
In due time, she hopes to transition to the screen.
“I enjoy acting,” she says. “There are scripts and stuff being talked about, but it’s not official yet, and also because of still having to peak in my career. So I’m finding time to balance it all out so that I don’t sacrifice one for the other, but exciting, exciting days are ahead.”
