Born in Jakarta and raised in Singapore, Vanessa Guinadi is a coloratura soprano and performer known for her imaginative voice and deep musical instinct. Praised for her “beautiful combination of singing and acting” (Theaterkrant), Vanessa has a wide appetite for all that opera and performance has to offer. 

Vanessa debuted as a singer and performer at age 9 in the children’s choir of the Singapore Lyric Opera as a hungry villager in John Rutter’s The Reluctant Dragon. She found something invigorating about miming guzzling, munching and gobbling while counting to 4.

After a winding journey through School of the Arts Singapore, the Royal Northern College of Music Manchester and the Royal Conservatoire The Hague, she is still chasing that same high.

Vanessa’s performances take audiences along in the wild feast of voice, body and performance regardless of genre or discipline.

Her repertoire spans from repertory roles to new creations. She premiered the role of Poes (Mispoes) with Holland Opera, after reimagining Purcell's The Fairy Queen as part of their Ensemble (Midsummer Nightmare). She interpreted the roles of Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Ninetta (La finta semplice) and 1st Wood Sprite (Rusalka) in her studies. She will soon sing the role of Marianne in her debut with Opera Spanga in Der Rosenkavalier.

In contemporary opera, she treads across Europe from Muziektheater Transparant (BE) in Aïda Gabriëls’ “Passages” to the Opera Forward Festival LAB by the Dutch National Opera (NL), amongst others.

On the concert stage, she shows her versatility in collaborating with a wide range of ensembles, from lutesong in St. Martin-in-the-Fields with Sara Salloum, to Weimar Republic cabaret in a dingy pub in Battersea with the Zephyr Collective, to combining contemporary dance and choral with CHOREOS (DE).

The artistic bacchanalia extends as a performance and program maker. Vanessa creates immersive polyphonic experiences in museums across the Netherlands as performer and co-producer of Ensemble CIRCE, creating live experiences in the Kröller-Möller Museum to Museum De Pont. She also makes her own solo interdisciplinary performances, researching movement creation from vocal impulses.

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