Press Review

A revelation: the young soprano Tamara Bounazou.

Incandescent and sorrowful, Tamara Bounazou's Iphigénie is a devastating surge of energy, her singing overwhelming in its almost childlike wildness. With a brilliant timbre studded with metallic glints, the singer unfurls a projected, sustained line, moving with ease from raging climax to infinite tenderness. Initially considered a discovery, the Franco-Algerian soprano is a revelation.

The text is most savoured by the interpreter of the title role, Tamara Bounazou — an Iphigénie who does not seek compassion: a rebel rather, with a laser-beam voice and chiselled diction, whose rage erupts with the discipline of a great classical tragedienne.

Yet Tamara Bounazou, in a virtuosic role debut, portrays both the supreme arrogance of the princess and her unease in the face of the dwarf's radical sincerity.

The title role reveals Tamara Bounazou — an Iphigénie of heartrending accents whose immediately recognisable vocal colour is not without echoes of Jessye Norman's nocturnal bronze. The range, nourished even in the lower register, the exemplary articulation, the intense acting (Ô Malheureuse Iphigénie lying on her back) crown the laureate of the 2025/2026 Promotion Génération Opéra as a singer of exceptional stature.

Tamara Bounazou: a tragedienne is born. The young soprano commands an astonishing theatrical and musical power. Endowed with an assertive timbre she does not seek to embellish, and with exemplary diction that bites into the text or, as needed, lets it flow like spring water, the singer bends her voice to the demands of a tessitura that seems never to challenge her, from low to high. From the most tender to the most blazing, she embodies a woman hunted by fate yet resolved to fight it — at turns wild, at turns softened, brushing a cruelty that horrifies her while yearning for a tenderness she believes out of reach.

When speaking of Bounazou, it is hardly an exaggeration to praise without reserve a soprano who, with such scrupulous subtlety, gracious vigour and rich beauty, handled Stravinsky's twisting lines and demanding dynamic contrasts with such dignity. […] Bounazou is a technician of the highest order: every rhythmic passage, every difficult melodic contour, every a cappella moment was treated with precision yet never at the expense of phrasing. The spirit of Sutherland was transmitted that evening, and I shall never forget it.