Elizette Bayan

Maria Elizette de Magalhães Melo Bayan (1938–2025) was a Portuguese opera soprano who performed both in Portugal and internationally.

Early life Bayan was born in Viseu, Portugal on 28 October 1938. She first sang with an orchestra at the age of ten in Coimbra. She learnt piano and singing with her mother before studying singing at the National Conservatory of Music in Lisbon (Conservatório Nacional de Lisboa). She then went to the Mozarteum University Salzburg in Austria before studying at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, benefitting from a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Among others, she studied with Gino Bechi.

Career Bayan debuted professionally in 1967 in the role of Rosina in Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville, with the then Portuguese Opera Company (CPO) at the Teatro da Trindade in Lisbon. In 1969, after an international competition in Salzburg, she was chosen to participate in Mozart Week, later repeating her performance in Brussels and Ghent in Belgium. While still in Salzburg, she sang for the radio station, ORF. Two years later gave concerts in the Rittersaal of the Salzburg Residenz, under the direction of conductors Paul Müller, , and Michael Mann. She also sang the Stabat Mater, a 13th-century Christian hymn, under the direction of Harald Gattermair. In the same year she was awarded the Bordalo Prize. In 2005, on the occasion of International Women's Day she was made a Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry by the Portuguese president, Jorge Sampaio.

Death Bayan died on 29 May 2025. She was buried in the Olivais cemetery in Lisbon.