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Mireille Capelle

Mireille Capelle


Mireille Capelle appeared in various films and plays, as in an impressive number of operatic roles including Wagnerian parts such as Eva and Kundry,  or Salome and Der Komponist (Richard Straus) and a slew of French characters from Charlotte and Metella to Jeanne d’Arc (Jeann d'Arc au bûcher, by Honegger). In parallel she developped a large concert repertoire including main sacred and secular works from early baroque to contemporary music. She sang under the baton of Marc Minkowski, Jos Van Immerseel, Massimo Zanetti, Sylvain Cambreling, Seiji Ozawa, Silvio Varviso …and was directed by Robert Carsen, Guy Joosten, Andrea Breth, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Alvis Hermanis

Mireille Capelle belongs to the most versatile singers of her generation. She manages to combine most intimate singing as a classical recitalist and opera singeer with pioneering all round "performances" as a vocalist, composer and soundscaper. Her apport to contemporary music is enormous, including fruitful encounters with composers such as Cage, Crumb, Carter, Maxwell Davis, Kagel, Battistelli, Sciarrino, Brewaeys, Hubber, Wim Henderickx… Furthermore she is linked to the Hermès Ensemble as a member of the artistic committee and performer.

Her sound scapings also defined as Sonic Architecture, are electronic sculptures to be performed as a live format. The first one, Kinesis Akinetos, was created at the art community Kanaal Axel Vervoordt (B), beneath the Anish Kapoor installation entitled “At the age of the World". Nefesh and Ruach were created at the "Contemporary Music Festival" in Liège (B). Anello and Tra at Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, eventually Naga had its première in Paris.

Mireille Capelle composed the sound track for : La Perle, a movie by the surrealist film-maker, Henri d’Ursel.

As a Professor at the Royal school of arts from Gent she has during many years largely contributed to the all round vocal education of the next generation singers.




Flanders Arts Institute

Expertise centre for performing arts, music and visual arts.