Nancy Yuen Miu Fun (阮妙芬; born 1967) is a Singaporean singer.

Career

Yuen was born in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. She is a graduate of the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of ...

, London. and has based her career in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

and

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

. She has made Cio-cio-san (''

Madama Butterfly ''Madama Butterfly'' (; ''Madame Butterfly'') is an opera in three acts (originally two) by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It is based on the short story "Madame Butterfly" (1898) by John Luther ...

'') her role, winning acclaim. Immediately upon graduation, she made her operatic debut with the

Welsh National Opera Welsh National Opera (WNO) ( cy, Opera Cenedlaethol Cymru) is an opera company based in Cardiff, Wales; it gave its first performances in 1946. It began as a mainly amateur body and transformed into an all-professional ensemble by 1973. In its ...

in this demanding Puccini title role, and has since repeated the role all over the world, notably with the English National Opera,

West Australian Opera West Australian Opera (WAO) is the principal opera company of Western Australia and is a resident company at His Majesty's Theatre, Perth. The company formed in 1967 and works in close association with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. It pr ...

, Opera Queensland,

Northern Ireland Opera Northern Ireland Opera is Northern Ireland's national opera company. The company is based at the Carnegie Building, Donegall Road, Belfast, and its major funder is the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The company's patron is Sean Rafferty, and ...

, Singapore Lyric Opera, the 1994 New Zealand International Festival of Arts, the 1995 Barbados Opera Festival and the Royal Albert Hall productions by David Freeman in 1998, 2000 and 2003. Yuen's other operatic roles include Romilda ('' Xerxes''), Violetta (''

La Traviata ''La traviata'' (; ''The Fallen Woman'') is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on ''La Dame aux camélias'' (1852), a play by Alexandre Dumas ''fils'' adapted from his own 18 ...

''), Aida, Gilda ('' Rigoletto''), Titania (''

A Midsummer Night's Dream ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a comedy written by William Shakespeare 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict amon ...

''), Rosalinda ('' Die Fledermaus''), Nedda (''

Pagliacci ''Pagliacci'' (; literal translation, "Clowns") is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The opera tells the tale of Canio, actor and leader of a commedia dell'arte theatrical company, who m ...

''), Siok Imm (''Bunga Mawar''), Leonora ('' Il trovatore''), the title role of ''

Tosca ''Tosca'' is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900. The work, based on Victorien Sardou's 1 ...

'', Liza ('' The Queen of Spades''), Mimi ('' La bohème''), Jenny (''

Mahagonny-Songspiel ''Mahagonny, ein Songspiel'', or ''Mahagonny, a song-play'', was written by composer Kurt Weill and dramatist Bertolt Brecht and first performed with that title and description in 1927. Elisabeth Hauptmann contributed the words to two of its songs. ...

''), Micaela (''

Carmen ''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the Carmen (novella), novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first perfo ...

''), Pamina (''

The Magic Flute ''The Magic Flute'' (German: , ), K. 620, is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a ''Singspiel'', a popular form during the time it was written that inclu ...

'') with Opera Queensland, Donna Anna (''

Don Giovanni ''Don Giovanni'' (; K. 527; Vienna (1788) title: , literally ''The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni'') is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanis ...

'') and Liu ('' Turandot''). In September 2018, Yuen was appointed a professor at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Yuen made her role debut as the Countess in Mozart's '' Le Nozze di Figaro'' in 2006 with the Singapore Lyric Opera, and gave recitals and concerts in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, China and the UK. She was the Head of Vocal Studies at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore from July 2003 to 2010. She is currently the Head of Vocal Studies at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and the residing soprano of Thailand's

Bangkok Opera Opera Siam, formerly Bangkok Opera, is an opera company in Bangkok, Thailand. It presents an international opera repertoire, together with home-grown favorites.Fodor's Bangkok 25 Best', p. 90 (2015). The company was founded in 2001, as a produc ...

Performances

Yuen has a repertoire ranging from

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

to contemporary. She performs regularly at the main UK venues and in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia. Orchestras she has sung with include the London Mozart Players, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Tivoli Symphony Orchestra in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, Denmark, and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (under

Christopher Hogwood Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood (10 September 194124 September 2014) was an English conductor, harpsichordist, writer, and musicologist. Founder of the early music ensemble the Academy of Ancient Music, he was an authority on historically info ...

). She has also recorded for the BBC, Radio Television Hong Kong and Radio FM, New Zealand. She has performed the soprano solos in ''

Messiah In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; , ; , ; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of ''mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach'' ...

'', '' The Creation'', '' The Seasons'', the ''

Nelson Mass The ' (Mass for troubled times), commonly known as the ''Nelson Mass'' ( Hob. XXII/11), is a Mass setting by the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn. It is one of the six masses written near the end of his life that are seen as a culmination of Hay ...

'', the ''

Christmas Oratorio The ''Christmas Oratorio'' (German: ''Weihnachtsoratorium''), , is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach intended for performance in church during the Christmas season. It is in six parts, each part a cantata intended for performance on one of t ...

'', '' Carmina Burana'', '' Elijah'', Monteverdi's ''

Vespers Vespers is a service of evening prayer, one of the canonical hours in Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic Church, Catholic (both Latin liturgical rites, Latin and Eastern Catholic Churches, Eastern), Lutheranism, Lutheran, and Anglican ...

'', Mozart's ''

Requiem A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead ( la, Missa pro defunctis) or Mass of the dead ( la, Missa defunctorum), is a Mass of the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, ...

'' and ''

Great Mass in C minor ''Great Mass in C minor'' (german: Große Messe in c-Moll, links=no), K. 427/417a, is the common name of the musical setting of the mass by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which is considered one of his greatest works. He composed it in Vienna in 1782 ...

'', Poulenc's ''

Gloria Gloria may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music Christian liturgy and music * Gloria in excelsis Deo, the Greater Doxology, a hymn of praise * Gloria Patri, the Lesser Doxology, a short hymn of praise ** Gloria (Handel) ** Gloria (Jenkins) ...

'', Beethoven's '' Ninth Symphony'', the Brahms, Fauré and

Verdi Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the h ...

''Requiem''s, Mahler's Fourth Symphony and Janáček's ''

Glagolitic Mass The ''Glagolitic Mass'' (, '' cu, script=latn, Mša glagolskaja''; also called ''Missa Glagolitica'' or ''Slavonic Mass'') is a composition for soloists (soprano, contralto, tenor, bass), double chorus, organ and orchestra by Leoš Janáček. The ...

''. In 2004 Yuen released her first solo CD, ''Per l'amore'', with the

Siam Philharmonic Orchestra 580px, Siam Philharmonic Orchestra members during their 2004 Singapore tour The Siam Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 2002 in Bangkok, Thailand, under the name "Mifa Sinfonietta". At that time it was a small chamber ensemble devoted to bri ...

under the baton of

Somtow Sucharitkul S. P. Somtow (a rearrangement of his real name Somtow Papinian Sucharitkul; th, สมเถา สุจริตกุล; ; born 30 December 1952) is a Thai-American musical composer. He is also a science fiction, fantasy, and horror autho ...

. In 2005 she repeated her performance as Cio-cio-san at the Singapore Esplanade Theatre with the Singapore Lyric Opera; she made her debut with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, singing the role of Princess Han Li Bao in the world premiere of the operatic cantata ''Zheng He'', written specially for her by Law Wai Lun, as part of the Singapore Arts Festival. She also repeated the title role of

Mae Naak Mae Nak Phra Khanong ( th, แม่นากพระโขนง, meaning 'Lady Nak of Phra Khanong'), or simply Mae Nak ( th, แม่นาก, 'Lady Nak') or Nang Nak ( th, นางนาก, 'Miss Nak'), is a well-known Thai ghost. Acc ...

with the

, a coloratura role created for her by

in 2003. She made her debut with the Macau Symphony Orchestra singing the soprano solo in Mendelssohn's ''

Midsummer Night's Dream ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a comedy written by William Shakespeare 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict amon ...

''.

Personal life

Yuen married Singaporean lawyer Toh Weng Cheong in 2000.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yuen, Nancy 1967 births Living people Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music Hong Kong emigrants to Singapore Naturalised citizens of Singapore 20th-century Singaporean women singers