Ermonela Jaho was born in Albania and took her first music lessons at the age of six. After completing her musical studies in Tirana, she won first prizes at several international singing competitions (Milan, Ancona, Rovereto) and then perfected her skills at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. She made her debut appearances in Italy (Mimi in La Bohème at Bologna’s Teatro Comunale, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro at Venice’s La Fenice, and Micaela in Carmen at Trieste’s Teatro Verdi).

She currently makes regular guest appearances at many of the world’s most prestigious opera houses performing a roster of roles that include Violetta (La Traviata), Cio-Cio San (Madame Butterfly) and the title role in Suor Angelica. Her interpretation of that particular role at the Royal Opera House in London earned her the Readers Award at the 2016 International Opera Awards. During the 2017 / 2018 season, she made her debut appearance at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in La Traviata, a role she has sung all over the world (the New York Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, the Paris Opera, the Vienna Staatsoper, Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper, Verona, Madrid, Stuttgart, Marseille, Berlin, Stockholm, Hamburg, Lyon, etc.)
She also appeared in Suor Angelica in Munich and in Madama Butterfly at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Metropolitan Opera. Her repertoire includes the great heroines of Bellini, Donizetti, Puccini, Rossini and Verdi, the title role in Thaïs (Teatro Real, Madrid, 2018), Antonia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann (a role she performed at the Paris Opera in 2016 and again more recently at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam), and operas by Auber, Bizet, Chabrier, Gounod, Handel, Milhaud, Mozart, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Rimsky Korsakov, Johann Strauss, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky. Her recording of Leoncavallo’s Zaza (Opera Rara) was nominated for the 2017 International Opera Awards. She has just given her debut performance in the role of Valentine (Les Huguenots) at the Paris Opera.

Projects:
La Traviata at London’s Royal Opera House and the Berlin Staatsoper, Magda (La Rondine) at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Madama Butterfly at the Wiesbaden Staatstheater and the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich. •

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