Acclaimed interpreter of the most famous Verdi and Puccini heroines with a repertoire that ranges from bel canto to verismo, Maria José Siri is considered today among the most important sopranos on the international opera scene. "Capable of a total abandonment" with "brilliant treble" (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) combined with a "steel voice with lyricism and pathos" (The Financial Times) is considered "interpreter of maximum reference and not only for the luxuriant vocality but also for an emission that ideally recalls the full and rounded sound of Tebaldi ”(Opera Áctual).
After playing Lucrezia Contarini, exalting the poignant dramatism of Verdi's heroine in the new production of I due Foscari at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, she enchanted the Austrian audience of the Musikverein in Graz singing an incisive Abigaille alongside Plácido Domingo as Nabucco. Playing this role successfully also in the season of the Arena di Verona, a season in which his workhorse Aida was not lacking, also performed in a production at the Semperoper Dresden. In addition, in the Arena di Verona she performed with excellent feedback also on the occasion of the Gala Domingo in Verdi Opera Night, making her debut as Lady Macbeth.
Born in Uruguay with Italian roots, Maria José approached music from the age of five and began her vocal studies at ENAL in Montevideo, then specializing at the Paris Conservatory and then with the great Ileana Cotrubas. In 2002 she took her first steps on the stages of Uruguay and Argentina, arriving in Europe in 2008 with Leonora in Il Trovatore at the Carlo Felice Theater in Genoa.
Since then, her career has been consolidated and has grown strongly since 2016, when she inaugurated the Teatro alla Scala interpreting Madama Butterfly with great success with audiences and critics. Awarded in 2017 with the Opera Oscar. At La Scala, where she made her debut in 2009 as Aida, she again starred in Aida (2015) and then in the new productions of Francesca da Rimini (2018) and Manon Lescaut (2019). In addition to an intense relationship with the main Italian theaters including above all the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Adriana Lecouvreur, Suor Angelica / Giorgetta, Abigaille, Lucrezia Contarini), Maria José Siri has a very deep collaboration with the Wiener Staatsoper (Maddalena di Coigny , Madama Butterfly, Elisabetta di Valois, Leonora, Tosca) and with the main German theaters: Staatsoper and Deutsche Oper of Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper, Hamburgische Staatsoper, Semperoper Dresden. She is also very present in Belgium, at the Opera Royale de Wallonie and in Spain, especially at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, at the ABAO and at the Pérez Galdós Theater. Acclaimed by Tokyo's New National Theater at the Savonlinna Festival, she also made a triumphant return to Latin America last April by performing two galas at the Teatro Colón alongside Plácido Domingo.
Her relationship with the Verona Arena, a city also chosen as his home, is special, where the artist has played roles such as Donna Elvira, Nedda / Santuzza and Aida in the summer festival, as well as numerous gala evenings: Donna Elvira, Nedda / Santuzza and Aida soon it will celebrate its 150th performance interpreted from Europe to Japan to Brazil and even in front of the Pyramids of Giza. Also in Verona at the Philharmonic Theater you played Giorgetta.
Among the heroine roles most loved by Maria José Siri is the warrior Odabella in Attila who made her debut at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna (2016, DVD Cmajor) and then faced at the Teatro Regio di Parma (2018 and 2021): also with this role he made his debut in July at the prestigious Royal Opera House in London.