Nicole Cabell

American opera singer

Nicole Cabell (born October 17, 1977) is an American opera singer. She is best known as the 2005 winner of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. Cabell was born in Panorama City, California. Her grandfather, Luther Lanier, was the first African American Chief in the Sheriff's Department in Los Angeles. She is of African American, Korean and Caucasian ancestry, and was brought up in the California beach town of Ventura. As a child, she did not listen to classical music, but she did play the flute in her junior high school band. She was planning to make her debut at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in mid December 2006, but due to the last minute indisposition of soprano Angela Gheorghiu, Cabell was asked to step in, and her debut took place somewhat earlier on 7 December as Juliette in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette alongside Neil Shicoff. She had previously sung the role at the Spoleto Festival USA in May 2006. Cabell made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera on December 22, 2008, singing the role of Pamina in The Magic Flute. In 2007, she gave her first solo recital at St John's Smith Square in London, sang the title role in Donizetti's Imelda de' Lambertazzi at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Musetta in La bohème in Munich; during the Santa Fe Opera's 2007 summer festival season; at the Washington National Opera; and at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Cabell's repertoire includes Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Juliette (Roméo et Juliette), The Countess (Le nozze di Figaro), Adina (L'elisir d'amore), The Vixen (The Cunning Little Vixen), Musetta (La bohème), Lauretta and La Ciesca (Gianni Schicchi), Clara (Porgy and Bess), La Princesse in Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, La Femme in Poulenc's La voix humaine, Miss Jessel in The Turn of the Screw and Arsamenes in Xerxes. She has recently added the role of Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo and will be performing the role of Micaëla in "Carmen" at the Chicago Lyric Opera in the 2010–2011 season. Her concert repertoire includes Mahler's Symphonies No. 2 and 4, Poulenc's Gloria, Orff's Carmina Burana, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, Tippett's A Child of Our Time, André Previn's Honey and Rue and Henryk Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Cabell has collaborated with major conductors such as Sir Andrew Davis, James Conlon, Daniel Barenboim, Antonio Pappano, André Previn and Sir Raymond Leppard. In 2011 she sang Donna Elvira in Cologne and Berlin, and was invited to be a commentator on the 2011 Cardiff Singer of the World competition. During the 2012 festival season at the Santa Fe Opera, Cabell sang the role of Leila in Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers.

Nicole Cabell is signed to a recording contract with Decca. Her first recording, released in 2006, was of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, conducted by John Mauceri, while her first solo recital album, Soprano, is of arias in French, Italian and English. It was released in 2007 and received two awards: the Georg Solti Prize Orphée d'Or 2007 by the Académie du Disque Lyrique for a promising recording career and The Gramophone Magazine's Editor's Choice in May 2007. She sang the title role in the 2007 recording of Donizetti's Imelda de' Lambertazzi for Opera Rara, conducted by Mark Elder with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. She appeared in a filmed version of Puccini's La Bohème as Musetta for Deutsche Grammophon, alongside Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bertrand de Billy. The film debuted on PBS in December 2009.