Amira Selim (born in

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

) is an Egyptian

soprano A soprano () is a type of classical singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hertz, Hz to A5 in Choir, choral ...

and

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

singer, based in France.Catta, Amal Choucri
"Continuing discoveries"
, ''

Al-Ahram Weekly ''Al-Ahram Weekly'' is an English-language weekly broadsheet printed by the Al-Ahram Publishing House in Cairo, Egypt. History and profile ''Al Ahram Weekly'' was established in 1991 by the ''Al-Ahram'' newspaper, which also runs a French-langu ...

'', Issue No. 643, 19–25 June 2003

Life

Selim was born in Cairo, the daughter of pianist Marcelle Matta and painte
Ahmed Fouad Selim
After studying piano, ballet and painting, she started voice training and Italian repertoire in Italy with soprano Gabriella Ravazzi in 1993 and graduated from the Cairo Conservatoire in 1999. In October 2001, she received a scholarship from the French Government to study with soprano Caroline Dumas at the

École Normale de Musique de Paris The École Normale de Musique de Paris "Alfred Cortot" (ENMP) is a leading conservatoire located in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. The school was founded in 1919 by Auguste Mangeot and Alfred Cortot. The term ''école normale'' (English: no ...

, where she obtained the ''Diplôme supérieur de concertiste'' in 2004. In 2002, she was the first prize winner at the international competition of Orvieto, Italy. Selim started her career as a member and soloist at the

Cairo Opera The Cairo Opera House (, ''Dār el-Opera el-Masreyya''; literally "Egyptian Opera House"), part of Cairo's National Cultural Centre, is the main performing arts venue in the Egyptian capital. Home to most of Egypt's finest musical groups, it is ...

company in 1997 with her first leading role in Rossini’s Opera ''Il Barbiere di Siviglia'' in 1998, it was followed by a number of other productions. After moving to France, she continued to feature in Egyptian Opera's as well as French, Italian and German companies. On April 3, 2021, she participated in the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade, an event during which 22 mummies of Ancient Egyptian kings & queens were moved from the

Egyptian Museum The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, commonly known as the Egyptian Museum (, Egyptian Arabic: ) (also called the Cairo Museum), located in Cairo, Egypt, houses the largest collection of Ancient Egypt, Egyptian antiquities in the world. It hou ...

to the

National Museum of Egyptian Civilization The National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC) is a large museum located in Old Cairo, a district of Cairo, Egypt. Partially opened in 2017, the museum was officially inaugurated on 3 April 2021, with the moving of 22 mummies, including 1 ...

in Cairo. In her performance, she sang "A Reverence for

Isis Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom () as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her sla ...

" in the

Ancient Egyptian Language The Egyptian language, or Ancient Egyptian (; ), is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world ...

, which was taken from inscriptions on the walls on

Deir el-Shelwit Deir el-Shelwit (Arabic: دير الشلويط – Dayr aš-Šalwīṭ, French: ''Deir Chelouit''Christiane M. Zivie: ''Le temple du Deir Chelouit'', Cairo, IFAO, 1992.) is an ancient Egyptian Egyptian temple, temple to Isis from the Greco-Roma ...

Luxor Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt. Luxor had a population of 263,109 in 2020, with an area of approximately and is the capital of the Luxor Governorate. It is among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited c ...

Roles with the Cairo Opera

* March 1998 : Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini). * November 1999 : Norina in Don Pasquale (Donizetti). * February 2000 : Adina in L'elisir d'amore (Donizetti). * January 2001/February 2008 : Gilda in Rigoletto (Verdi). * June 2010 : Adina in L'elisir d'amore (Donizetti).

Other roles

* August 1997 : Serafina in ''Il Campanello'' (Donizetti), Orvieto, Italy. * August 2001 : Adina in 'L’Elisir d’amore'' (Donizetti), Orvieto, Italy. * August 2002 : Gilda in Rigoletto (Verdi), Orvieto, Italy. * May 2004 : Title role Lakmé (Delibes), Rennes, France . * June 2005 : Ten performances of Carmina Burana, Paris, France. * January 2006 : Concert ''Spirits of Mozart'', Vienna, Austria. * April 2006 : Carmina Burana/Recital, Essaouira, Marocco. * January 2007 : Title-role Lakmé (Delibes), Saint-Étienne, France. * March 2007 : Nannetta in Falstall (Verdi), Tours, France. * November 2007 : Queen of the Night in the Magic Flute (Mozart), Marseille, France. * January 2008 : Title- role Lakmé (Delibes), Bielefeld, Germany. * April 2008 : Queen of the Night in the Magic Flute (Mozart), Levallois, France. * October 2009 : Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini), Mantoue, Italie. * January 2010 : Contemporary piece by Suzanne Giraud, Paris. * March 2010 : Ophelia in Hamlet (Ambroise Thomas), St Etienne, France.

Discography

* ''Mozart in Egypt'' (EMI/Virgin Classics, 2005)http://www.worldcat.org/title/mozart-in-egypt-2-from-an-idea-by-hughes-de-courson-and-ahmed-al-maghraby/oclc/474764693 WorldCat Entry * ''Spirits of Mozart'' - Christiane Oelze, Amira Selim, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Andrey Boreyko, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (Euroarts, 2006)

References

External links

Biography: Amira Selim
on Aliopera opera artists management {{DEFAULTSORT:Selim, Amira 1976 births Living people 21st-century Egyptian women singers École Normale de Musique de Paris alumni Egyptian operatic sopranos 21st-century French women opera singers