The Cosmopolitan
A portrait of the soprano Fatma Said

Opera today, tango tomorrow, and early music the day after that: Fatma Said is a musical cosmopolitan who sings in five different languages, slipping into the most varied of roles with ease. At the end of October, the Egyptian soprano makes her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Fatma Said’s voice is frequently described as “charming”, but it is also impressively versatile. It can gleam and sparkle, but can also produce veiled and melancholic shades. Moreover, her singing has a particular emotional quality, helping her to reach both the ears and the hearts of her listeners. And her repertoire is just as changeable as her voice. She made her debut at La Scala, Milan, in 2016, as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, and Mozart remains an important composer for her.

In recent years she has also sung more Baroque music, including Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with leading mezzo Joyce DiDonato and Pergolesi’s Stabat mater with star countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński. “I’d like to go even further in this direction,” she says about her forays into the field of early music, “because I can see that it does my voice good; but I actually feel most comfortable when I’m giving  a song recital. It’s  a medium that is very close to my heart.” As a song recitalist, she can bewitch her listeners with the alluringly exotic songs from Ravel’s Shéhérazade and impress them with her crystal-clear diction in songs by Schumann and Schubert.

From Egypt to Germany

Although all of this may sound like a normal singing career, this was by no means self-evident for a soprano born in Cairo in 1991. After all, Egypt is hardly a hotspot of classical music. She first came into contact with this world at the Catholic Girls’ School in her native Cairo. “It was a school run by German nuns,” she recalls, “and so there was a strong focus on music.”

She was still at school when she took part in the Jugend Musiziert competition, which brought her to Germany and encouraged her to take her first steps towards a professional singing career. In this she was always supported by her father, the opposition politician Ahmed Hassan Said. This, too, she stresses, was a stroke of luck. In Berlin she studied singing with Renate Faltin, who continues to be her voice coach. “Whenever I sing works that are new to my repertory, I still seek her advice and discuss certain things with her from a technical standpoint as well.”
 

Her album: a musical jewellery box

Fatma Said has also received encouragement from the legendary soprano Julia Varady, who persuaded her to try more Verdi and Puccini. But she continues to cultivate her Egyptian heritage, combining classical works in the European tradition with songs from her native Egypt. This was already evident in her debut album, El Nour, a cornucopia of vocal gems in the form of songs by thirteen composers spanning a range of three centuries. She recorded the disc for the Warner label, with whom she is under exclusive contract. In choosing this programme, Fatma Said aligned herself with a generation of artists who have self-assuredly – and successfully – elected to perform programmes that go beyond the core repertory of Western classical music.

At the end of this year, Fatma Said has a very special date in her busy concert schedule, when she makes her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Even now she admits to being a little nervous, but above all she is “really looking forward to this concert, as it’s the dream of every singer to be able to appear with this orchestra,” she says.

Berlin debut

Said will be performing Haydn’s cantata Arianna a Naxos under the direction of the Haydn specialist Giovanni Antonini, with whom she has already worked on several occasions. She particularly admires the way that he commands the orchestra. “It’s like chamber music on the very highest level,” she says with enthusiasm. “He’s like a DJ standing at his desk, turning up the volume a little at one point before turning it down again elsewhere, sometimes obscuring the beat and at other times reasserting it. I have the feeling that he can do everything he wants with his hands.”

Fatma Said’s debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker will be something of a homecoming. She currently divides her time between London and Berlin. “But for me Berlin is the one city in Europe where you can be whatever you want. I feel part of the city, because everyone can lead whatever life they want to lead here. I really value this freedom!”