Inese Galante (born 12 March 1954) is a Latvian soprano opera singer. Galante is known for a great beauty of tone, nuanced pianissimos and sensitive command of dynamics and colour. Her performance of Vavilov's Ave Maria (often attributed to Giulio Caccini), from her "Debut" album 1995 started spreading worldwide interest in the piece.

Career

Galante was born in Riga to a musical family. She entered the Latvian Academy of Music in Riga in 1977. While still a student at the Academy, she became a soloist of the Latvian National Opera. Parallel to her work in Riga she was engaged in opera productions at other theatres, particularly at the Kirov Opera (Mariinsky theatre) in Saint Petersburg, Russia where she had a fruitful collaboration with conductor Valery Gergiev.

From 1991 until 1999, Galante was soloist at National Theatre Mannheim and Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf. Since then she has been touring and performing all over the world. Galante's voice has been heard at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier (France), at the St Denis Festival, the Newport Music Festival and the Gibson Hall (USA), at the Barbican Centre, the Royal Albert Hall, the Wigmore Hall and Kensington Palace (London), at the Royal Swedish Opera, and at the Kremlin and the Bolshoi Theatre (Moscow), where she made her debut as Adriana in Cilea's opera Adriana Lecouvreur in the La Scala production. In 2001 Galante appeared in concert in Rotterdam together with José Carreras.