Arts Global

Young Swiss-Canadian soprano Laure Barras spent her childhood in Switzerland and abroad. After living in the United States, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates, she settled in France in 2001. There she took singing classes with Armande Olivier and studied drama at the Cours Florent. She also developed a great interest in oriental languages and civilizations, and, in Paris in 2006, obtained her Bachelors in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. Starting in 2005, she participated in the musical theater company "A l'Abordage" and performed in various theatres in Paris and Lyon. At the same time, eager to combine her passion for the performing arts with her Arabic studies, she organized musical and theatre workshops for children in United Nations refugee camps in the West Bank. She returned to Switzerland in 2006 and entered a Bachelors program in lyrical singing at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne. In February 2008, she gave a recital at the Pierre Gianadda Fondation in Martigny, where she received first prize and the Solidarvox scholarship. She was presented in concert in Beirut, Lebanon in March 2008 with a Lebanese tenor at the USJ Hall, and the following year participated at a charity event for the tobacco-free foundation TFI, also in the Lebanese capital. In September 2009, she played Pallade in Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea in Geneva and Ambronay, and in September 2010, she was Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Sion, Switzerland.

After studying two years with the Swiss mezzo-soprano Brigitte Balleys at the Haute Ecole de Musique in Lausanne, Ms Barras is currently pursuing her Masters with Gary Magby at the same institution. In January 2011, she will present a recital at the Paul Klee Center in Bern as part of the exposition Lust und Laster: Die 7 Todsünden von Dürer bis Nauman. In March 2011, she will perform Annina in Verdi’s La Traviata in St Maurice, Switzerland, and the following May she will give a recital in Los Angeles. At this event she will receive the Echoes Above Award from the Bel Canto Institute.

For additional information, please visit Laure Barras’ personal website, www.laurebarras.com.