Pretty Yende has performed at major opera houses, but nothing will match the experience she is about to have on May 6, when she will sing, in front of tens of millions of viewers, at the occasion of the coronation of Charles III. “I’m counting the hours, I can’t wait,” enthuses the 38-year-old South African who will sing at Westminster Abbey, a creation by British composer Sarah Class, Sacred Fire.
In the lyrical world, Pretty Yende has for ten years been in demand all over the world, from the Metropolitan Opera House to the Paris Opera, via La Scala in Milan, critics praising her charisma and her luminous timbre in particular. in the bel canto. “It’s a dream come true, I had maybe a few million spectators during my 22-year career but like that, all of a sudden, it never happened to me”, she smiles during an interview with AFP by videoconference.
Born in 1985 in a township of Piet Retief, a town in the east of a South Africa still under apartheid, the soprano still cannot believe having been invited to sing at the coronation of Charles III who had heard singing at Windsor Castle a year ago when he was still Prince of Wales. Particularly sensitive to classical music, the future king “was very warm and praised my voice”, she recalls.
The invitation is highly symbolic since the soprano claims to be the first African singer to sing solo at a coronation of kings and queens of England. “I’m really honored that this is happening to me. Future generations will see the name of this girl who came from the tip of Africa, at the invitation of the king himself, inscribed at this ceremony on May 6, ”she rejoices.
When his participation was announced, a few voices on social networks were raised to call on him to boycott the event because of the United Kingdom’s colonial past in South Africa. “I take every opportunity that comes to me as a possibility to reconcile, to heal, to love and to offer dreams for the future”, comments the artist who is part of a generation of African opera singers. and African-Americans who have risen to prominence for a decade. “We can’t change the past but I believe that each generation can, through small actions, give hope,” adds the singer.
Very present on social networks, she had launched for many years the hashtags
Having grown up in a religious family, she began to sing at the age of five, between traditional Zulu songs on the way to church and the gospels of the choir. But it was after seeing a British Airways advertisement using the famous Duo des Fleurs de Lakmé, Léo Délibes’ opera, that she fell in love with opera singing. “Opera is a gift for Humanity; this art has something divine too, so it must be shared”, underlines Pretty Yende who hopes that her interpretation will arouse people’s curiosity for the lyrical. Pretty Yende won’t be the only opera star to sing at the coronation: Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel will sing the first-ever musical creation in the Welsh language for a coronation.