Fatma Said Essentials

Fatma Said is renowned for her refined singing and a mesmerising stylistic palette that reflects her global presence. Born in Cairo in 1991, Said studied music in Berlin and Italy and became the first Egyptian soprano to perform at La Scala, singing Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (1791) and later reprising that role to inaugurate Shanghai’s Shangyin Opera House. Despite her immersion in European repertoire—Fauré's Requiem, Op. 48 (1890), Ravel's Shéhérazade (1904), and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 (1900) and Symphony No. 8 (1906)—Said never forgets her earliest cultural traditions. Her 2020 debut album, El Nour, showcases Egyptian composers and the Middle Eastern ney flute alongside French and Spanish art songs. Said brings her sublime voice to Baroque repertoire with Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński (Laetatus sum, ZWV 90, 1726) and, on her 2022 release Kaleidoscope, she weaves opera and zarzuela arias with the gauzy dreaminess of Irving Berlin, Serge Gainsbourg and Lerner & Loewe’s “I Could Have Danced All Night”.