Sylvie Valayre studied in her home city of Paris with Christiane Eda-Pierre and then with Sergio Tedesco in Rome. From the very start, she mainly appeared in Italy ad France in a a remarkably broad repertoire by composers such as Mozart, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, Mascagni, but also Ravel, Poulenc, Zemlinsky, Berg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Wolff-Ferrari, Lehár and de Falla. In 1996, she made her debuts at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice as Elisabeth (Don Carlos), as Abigaille (Nabucco) at the Covent Garden and again in Don Carlos (the 5-act version) at the Royal Albert Hall. Her numerous later debuts and performances include La Gioconda at Milan’s La Scala, Madama Butterfly in San Francisco, Jérusalem at the Carnegie Hall, Salome in Graz, Madama Butterfly at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Macbeth at the Opéra Bastille in Paris and Norma at the Macerata Festival. Her great success in Nabucco and Aida at the Arena in Verona (1998) is reapeated there every summer, e.g. in the title part in Pierluigi Pizzi’s new production of Aida. She also performed with Placido Domingo at the Metropolitan Opera in Andrea Chénier (2003).