The mezzo-soprano Sonia Ganassi was born in Reggio Emilia and studied singing with Alain Billard. In 1990 she won the Spoleto Premio A. Belli and made her début two years later as Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Rome Teatro dell’Opera. After this brilliant start to her career she was invited to appear at the most famous opera houses throughout the world, in Florence, Bologna, New York, San Francisco, Paris, London, Milan, Madrid, Barcelona and Washington. Further operatic projects followed in Leipzig, Vienna, Madrid, Turin, Naples and Bilbao.

She has worked with the conductors Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Riccardo Muti, Myung-Whun Chung, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Antonio Pappano, Bruno Campanella and Carlo Rizzi, and is considered one of the most important interpreters of mezzo-soprano and dramatic soprano rôles in Rossini and bel canto repertoire, including Angelina in La Cenerentola, Isabella in L’Italiana in Algeri, Leonora in La favorita, Elisabetta in Elisabetta Regina d’Inghilterra and Maria Stuarda. Her Mozart rôles have included Idamante in Idomeneo, Dorabella in Così fan tutte and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni. French repertoire includes Charlotte in Werther, the title rôle in Carmen und Niklausse in Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann.

She has won great success in the concert hall in repertoire including Stravinsky’s Pulcinella and Oedipus Rex, Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Verdi’s Requiem, Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été und Schumann’s Paradies und die Peri. She was awarded the Italian music critics’ Abbiati Prize for her interpretation of Zaide in Donizetti’s Dom Sébastien.