SorayaMafi

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  • Soprano

About Soraya

Soraya Mafi studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal College of Music and is a former Harewood Artist at the English National Opera.

In the 2024/25 season she will sing Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto for both Welsh National Opera and Irish National Opera and Pamina in Die Zauberfloete for Opera North. Following a great success as Valencienne in Glyndebourne's The Merry Widow conducted by John Wilson, she returns to the festival for Michal in Barrie Kosky's renowned production of Handel's Saul. In concert she sings Bach's Christmas Oratorio with the RIAS Kammerchor on tour in Europe, Viennese concerts with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Handel arias with Arcangelo and Jonathan Cohen. Looking ahead, in 25/26 she returns to WNO to sing Cunegonde Candide, and she will sing Nitocris Belshazzar for Komische Oper Berlin.

In the last two seasons she has sung Tytania A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Glyndebourne Festival and Opéra de Rouen; Susanna Le nozze di Figaro for Glyndebourne on Tour, and Ismene Mitridate, re di Ponto for Garsington Opera.

Elsewhere she has sung Tytania, Musetta La bohème, Despina Così fan tutte, Mabel The Pirates of Penzance and Yum Yum The Mikado for English National Opera, Susanna and Gilda Rigoletto for the Seattle Opera, Susanna for Welsh National Opera, Morgana Alcina and Anne Trulove The Rake’s Progress for Glyndebourne, Nanetta Falstaff for Garsington Opera, Gretel Hänsel und Gretel for Grange Park Opera and Echo Ariadne auf Naxos at the Edinburgh International Festival.

An accomplished recitalist, she has delighted audiences on tour in the UK with her programmes including Persian songs, reflecting her Iranian heritage.

Soraya is based in London

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Contact

Ivo Ivanov

Ivo Ivanov

Assistant Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

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Season Highlights

Jun 2024 - Jul 2024
Glyndebourne, Lewes
Lehar The Merry Widow (Valencienne) John Wilson (conductor)
Sep 2024 - Nov 2024
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff and on tour
Verdi Rigoletto (Gilda) Pietro Rizzo (conductor)
Dec 2024 - Dec 2024
Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin
Verdi Rigoletto (Gilda) Fergus Sheil (conductor)
Dec 2024 - Dec 2024
European tour
Bach Cantatas RIAS Kammerchor
Feb 2025 - Mar 2025
Theatre Royal, Leeds and on tour
The Magic Flute (Pamina) Patrick Lange (conductor)
Jun 2025 - Jul 2025
Glyndebourne Festival
Handel Saul (Michal) Jonathan Cohen (conductor)

Video

Audio

  • Mendelssohn Die Mainacht
  • Mendelssohn Wanderlied
  • Strauss Frühlingsstimmen Waltz

Photos

Selected Repertoire

Beethoven

Fidelio (Marzelline)

Bellini

I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Giulietta)

Bernstein

Candide (Cunegonde)   •   West Side Story (Maria)

Bizet

Les Pêcheurs des Perles (Leïla)

Britten

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Tytania)   •   The Turn of the Screw (Governess, Flora)   •   Peter Grimes (First Niece)   •   Paul Bunyan (Tiny)

Celier

The Mountebanks (Teresa)

Charpentier

Louise (Louise)

Donizetti

L’elisir d’amore (Adina)   •   Don Pasquale (Norina)   •   Linda di Chamounix (Linda)   •   Lucia di Lammermoor (Lucia)   •   La Fille du Régiment (Marie)

Gluck

Orfeo ed Eurydice (Eurydice, Amor)

Gounod

Roméo et Juliette (Juliette)

Hammerstein

Carousel (Julie Jordan)   •   Oklahoma! (Laurie)

Handel

Alcina (Morgana)   •   Orlando (Dorinda)   •   Giulio Cesare (Cleopatra)   •   Arianna in Creta (Arianna)   •   Partenope (Partenope)   •   Semele (Semele)

Janáček

The Cunning Little Vixen (Vixen Sharp-Ears)

Legrenzi

La Divisione del Mondo (Cintia)

Massenet

Manon (Manon)   •   Werther (Sophie)

Menotti

The Telephone (Lucy)

Monteverdi

L’incoronazione di Poppea (Poppea, Virtu)

Mozart

Le Nozze di Figaro (Susanna)   •   Così fan tutte (Despina)   •   Don Giovanni (Zerlina)   •   Die Zauberflöte (Pamina, Papagena)   •   La Clemenza di Tito (Servillia)   •   Idomeneo (Ilia)   •   Il sogno di Scipione (Fortuna)   •   Zaïde (Zaïde)   •   Mitridate re di Ponto (Ismene)   •   Il Re Pastore (Aminta)

Offenbach

Orpheus in the Underworld (Eurydice)

Poulenc

Dialogues des Carmélites (Constance)

Puccini

La Boheme (Musetta)   •   Gianni Schicci (Lauretta)

Purcell

Dido and Aeneas (Belinda)

Ravel

L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (Le Feu, Le Rossignol, La Princesse)

Sondheim

Sweeney Todd (Johanna)

Strauss

Der Rosenkavalier (Sophie)   •   Arabella (Zdenka)   •   Ariadne auf Naxos (Naiad, Echo)

Stravinsky

The Rake’s Progress (Ann Trulove)

Sullivan

The Mikado (Yum-yum, Peep-Bo)   •   The Pirates of Penzanze (Mabel)

Verdi

Rigoletto (Gilda)   •   Falstaff (Nanetta)   •   Un Ballo in Maschera (Oscar)

News

Press

  • Mozart Die Zauberflöte

    Welsh National Opera
    Feb 2025 - Mar 2025

    • Soraya Mafi, meanwhile, makes an exceptional role debut as a tenacious and principled Pamina: sung with thrilling assurance and swooning lyricism, she’s a princess well worth trials by fire and ice.

    • The steadfast Pamina is sung with gleaming purity of tone by coloratura soprano Soraya Mafi.

  • Verdi Rigoletto

    Irish National Opera
    Dec 2024

    • Soraya Mafi, fresh from singing the role for Welsh National Opera, returns to her part-Irish roots in what for me is the operatic performance of the year … almost floating away from the balcony in a breathtaking "Caro nome"

    • As Gilda, the English soprano Soraya Mafi … scales with incredible comfort and sweetness Verdi’s unforgiving vocal high-wire act.

    • Soraya Mafi offering a soaring innocence in her exquisite Gilda

    • Possessing a voice of angelic purity, Soraya Mafi unfurled the gossamer threads of her arias with grace and delicacy, her soprano silkily seductive and there was an effortless beauty as she reached up to those scarily high top notes.

    • ... the sweet, rounded tone of soprano Soraya Mafi made her a perfect Gilda and she comfortably handled technical challenges such as the coloratura aria ‘Caro nome'

  • Verdi Rigoletto

    Welsh National Opera
    Sep 2024

    • But really, it was Mafi’s night. She’s long been an excellent singer; but as Gilda she hit new heights – fearless, impulsive and vulnerable, but always glowing. As a foil for Luis de Vicente, Mafi was desperately moving; she lit the Act Three quartet from above and in ‘Caro nome’ she spun delicate, tumbling vocal lacework that glinted and shone against the drama’s thunderous skies.

    • British soprano Soraya Mafi, meanwhile, personifies Gilda to perfection, her aria, Caro Nome not just flawlessly voiced, but exemplifying Gilda’s perilous innocence. She stops the show.

    • As Gilda, Mafi was perfectly cast, her soprano stunningly beautiful, silvery with pin-point precision, everything immaculately delivered, and looking as young as she needs to be to portray her vulnerability, delirious with love.

    • Vocally, the honours go to Soraya Mafi who sings Gilda with exquisite sweetness, and plays her convincingly as a naively infatuated young girl.

  • Britten A Midsummer Night's Dream

    Glyndebourne Festival
    Jul 2023

    • She wore the Fairy Queen's extravagant high-Baroque frock (designed for Ileana Cotrubas in 1981) with imperious authority, and sang Tytania's glittering coloratura with a diamantine edge, suggesting a tougher cookie - she was defiant in her refusal to hand over the challenging boy to Tim Mead's Oberon - yet melting amorously into the arms of Bottom-as-an-Ass (Brandon Cedel).

      • Hugh Canning, Opera Today
      • 22 July 2023

  • Mozart Mitridate, re di Ponto

    Garsington Opera
    Jun 2023

  • Handel In the Realms of Sorrow

    London Handel Festival
    Feb 2023

    • Singing with a lovely fluency, light agility and sure sense of style, soprano Soraya Mafi was a despairing Hero, discovering her lover drowned, tearing out her hair, and then joining him in the dark waters. Mafi’s strong tone and expressive nuance, and her graceful partnership with Baker, made the torments of this mythic heroine very ‘real’ and pressing.

  • Mozart Le nozze di Figaro

    Glyndebourne on Tour
    Oct 2022

    • Mozart’s divine comedy stands or falls by its Susanna. Soraya Mafi, a rapidly rising star, is perfection, diction clear, manner funny and sharp, voice at ease in all the role’s demands. Catch this Figaro if you can.

    • The star of the evening, for me, was Soraya Mafi as Susanna: her performance was witty, pert, alert, vocally crystalline and precise, and utterly captivating. Mafi had to wait a long while for her own ‘big number’ but Act 4’s ‘Deh vieni’ was very much worth the wait. Both Williams and Mafi rose above Grandage’s comic innuendo and restored Mozart’s grace.

    • Mozart’s divine comedy thrives or falters by its Susanna and Mafi was in perfect voice as she handled with apparent ease the many demands of the role, balancing emotion and performance throughout with great comic touches, and I look forward to seeing what she does next.

  • Handel Alcina

    Glyndebourne Festival Opera
    Jul 2022

    • Another debut – long overdue – is made by the British soprano Soraya Mafi, whose dazzlingly bright and agile coloratura excited audiences across Britain for several seasons before Covid. She steals the show as Alcina’s scheming sister Morgana: flirtatious, vindictive and deliciously flighty. Her entrance in a mermaid suit is outrageous; her vivacious account of the aria Tornami a vagheggiar simply a showstopper.

    • As Morgana, Soraya Mafi sparkled in ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’, dancing evenly and crisply through the dazzling decorations, while ‘Credete al mio dolore’ was poised and expressive, its elegance aided by a lovely cello obbligato.

    • Soraya Mafi, as Morgana, gets the hit aria “Tornami a vagheggiar” and makes a sparkling job of it...

    • The singer who stole the show was Soraya Mafi, whose Act I ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ was the evening’s clear highlight, dripping with character, and with Mafi and the band in clear resonance. Mafi lights up the stage with her infectious vivacity; she somehow manages to match that with vocal agility and pinpoint pitching.

    • The most ebullient of these choreographed arias is delivered by the superb Soraya Mafi as Alcina’s sister Morgana: a showstopping Tornami a vagheggiar that’s danced and sung, incongruously but brilliantly...

    • Soraya Mafi copes athletically with her extortionate coloratura: she sounds as if she’s having a great time.

  • Mozart Così fan tutte

    English National Opera
    Mar 2022

    • Best are Soraya Mafi’s world-weary chambermaid Despina (her accents as dizzying as her disguises), all sardonic sparkle and cynicism, and [Neal] Davies’ scheming rogue of an Alfonso.

    • Bass-baritone Neal Davies is wonderfully entertaining in this not always attractive role, larging it in a mustard Zoot, and much aided by soprano Soraya Mafi as multi-talented Despina, laughter bubbling through her nimble voice. Here Despina is a chambermaid at the Skyline Motel, and Mafi does a marvellous turn as a line-dancing sheriff presiding over an on-the-spot wedding.

    • ...the most memorable moment...came when Despina, played with impressive and infectious humour throughout by Soraya Mafi, performed a cowboy dance with the two dwarfs while singing a Mozart aria.

  • Gilbert & Sullivan The Mikado

    English National Opera
    Oct 2018

    • Soraya Mafi is effortlessly optimistic as Yum-Yum, allowing the voice to soar in The Sun, Whose Rays.

    • Soraya Mafi was very appealing as the sassy – if rather fickle and somewhat vain – schoolgirl Yum-Yum who Nanki-Poo is in love with. Her Act II aria ‘The sun whose rays are all ablaze’ was exquisite...The couple’s mock-romantic duet in the first act (‘Were you not to Ko-Ko plighted’) – when Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum think about flirting even though it is against the law – was an absolute delight.

    • As bride-to-be Yum-Yum, soprano Soraya Mafi is as delightful as ever...

  • Verdi Rigoletto

    Seattle Opera
    Aug 2019

    • It is up to the Gilda of Soraya Mafi to shoulder the weight of this production... When she is on stage, her tiny post-adolescent figure and adorably open face fix our attention utterly, and when she sings we rise with her. I have never heard a more perfectly phrased “Caro nome,” but her every note and moment are equally simple, moving and right.

  • Humperdinck Hänsel und Gretel

    Grange Park Opera
    Jun 2019

    • the main pleasure comes from the singers of the title roles: Soraya Mafi, beautifully silvery of voice as Gretel.

    • The children, played by Soraya Mafi and the Australian mezzo Caitlin Hulcup, sound terrific as the mischievous pair, and sing exquisitely.

    • Caitlin Hulcup and Soraya Mafi were quite simply the most visually plausible Hansel and Gretel I have ever seen, boisterous anarchic children of the sort that always land in trouble and wangle their way out of it. Their singing was perfection – Hulcup all boyish bravado, Mafi mercurial and sparkling.

    • Soraya Mafi’s Gretel was lustrous and sweet, rising to soaring lyrical heights in the virtuosic passages of Act 3.

    • With her silvery, flexible soprano, Mafi steers Gretel just short of soubrette delight, and Hulcup’s lovely mezzo expresses any amount of adolescent diffidence, courage and affection. Hulcup is a head taller than Mafi, which puts the finishing touch to their credibility as brother and sister, and throughout they are immensely affecting and strongly directed.

    • Soraya Mafi and Caitlin Hulcup made a delightful pairing as Gretel and Hansel, for all the picturesque charm of the characters' depiction there was a fundamental seriousness to their performance which emphasised the music's quality. Mafi was a poised Gretel, shaping the lovely melodies carefully and expressively, and she was matched by Hulcup's wonderfully boyish Hansel (one of the best 'boys' I have seen in this opera for a long time), with the two voices blending and contrasting. They kept the action moving so that the scenes between them in the first two acts, which can sometimes drag somewhat, flew by.

Discography