Marianne Crebassa

Marianne Crebassa (born 14 December 1986) is a French mezzo-soprano.

Life and career Crebassa was born in Béziers and grew up in Agde, where her parents encouraged her interest in music, starting with piano and continuing when she was 14 with singing. She continued her music education at the music conservatory in Sète. in which she also impressed the critics by playing the piano on stage. Having sung Orphée in the Berlioz version at the Opéra studio in 2011, she reprised the part at the Opéra-Comique in 2018. The Opera critic commented that "tall and lanky in britches or cropped trousers, she brought her lovely, focused mezzo to her portrayal of the penniless student" while noting that her "diction, however, too often encouraged recourse to the surtitles".

Her considerable Mozart work has included Cecilio in Lucio Silla (in Salzburg and Milan), Sesto in La clemenza di Tito (Salzburg and Paris), Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro (Berlin, Vienna, New York, Amsterdam) and Dorabella in Così fan tutte (Chicago). Her stage debut in the US was with Lyric Opera of Chicago in February 2016, in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette as Stephano. In August 2017, she made her debut at The Proms singing Shéhérazade by Ravel. She added Mélisande to her repertoire in 2018 in Berlin; originally at the instigation of Daniel Barenboim, she said that she felt she had "sung it my whole life" and found new colours in her voice and relishing the text.

In 2017, Crebassa's first commercial recording, Oh Boy!, was released on the Erato label, and her second solo CD, Secrets: French Songs, also on Erato, consisting of Debussy's Trois chansons de Bilitis and Trois Mélodies de Verlaine, Fauré's Mirages, Op. 113, Ravel's Shéhérazade, four mélodies by Duparc and Fazıl Say's Gezi Park 3, won a Gramophone Award. Filmed DVDs of her include Mozart's Lucio Silla and Le nozze di Figaro, Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice, Berlioz's Les Troyens, and Ravel's Shéhérazade in concert at the Waldbühne in 2019.