French coloratura soprano with a Berber heritage, Marie Cayeux starts the 2023-2024 under the patronage of the International Opera Awards Foundation as a bursary recipient as well as singing at the prestigious Bayreuth Festival in the chorus. She will debute at Opéra de Monte-Carlo in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges as the Nightingale and the Princess and covering the role of the Fire.

Marie was a member of the Alexander Gibson Opera School in Glasgow for the seasons 2021-2023 as well as a recipient of the Sybil Tutton Opera Award and the Hamilton Duval Music Foundation Scholarship. In 2022, she won the 3rd Prize and Audience Prize at the Hurn Court Opera Competition and the 2nd Prize at Arles International Opera Competition. 2023 saw two critically acclaimed role debuts for Marie, as Louisa (A Feast in the Time of Plague, Cui) and The Maid (Four Sisters, Langer).

"As in last month’s L’etoile, the French soprano Marie Cayeux was outstanding in portraying the vivacious Louisa." "...the immensely promising Marie Cayeux as the Maid, who with her capriciousness and comic acting is another star." (Read full review here.)

"...soprano Marie Cayeux almost stole the show with the Maid’s anti-New York song." (Read full review here.)

"...French soprano Marie Cayeux having the best of the rest of the score. Cayeux also had the victory role in Four Sisters..." (Read full review here)

"...the singing and sitcom-style comic acting from the principals were superb. But I reserve a special mention for Marie Cayeux. I have seen her now in 3 roles [...]. She has a captivating stage presence and an individual vocal character with a steady vibrato that I find mesmerising [...]. Wow. " (Read full review here)

After falling in love with opera while performing the role of Juliet in Britten’s The Little Sweep at a young age, Marie gained considerable operatic experience, working with conductors such as Adam Hickox, Philip Walsh, Peter Robinson, Alex Ingram, William Cole, Dominic Wheeler, Cameron Burns, Philippe Forget, Lada Valesova and stage directors Stephen Lawless, Franzisca Severin, Nina Kühner, John Ramster, Dafydd Hall-Williams, Victoria Newlyn, Max Hoehn, BAFTA-winner PJ Harris, Caroline Clegg and Keith Warner. Past roles notably include Kitty (Passionnément, Messager – Festival Lyrique-en-Mer), Papagena (Die Zauberflöte, Mozart – Bloomsbury Opera), Taumann (Hänsel und Gretel, Humperdinck – RCS Opera & Hampstead Garden Opera) and La Princesse Laoula (L’Etoile, Chabrier – RCS Opera). Marie also thrived performing classic lyric coloratura and soubrettes roles during opera scenes: Adina (Donizetti), Despina (Mozart), Adele (Strauss), Elisetta (Cimarosa), Philine (Thomas), Fanny (Rossini), Servilia (Mozart), Marie (Donizetti), Semele (Handel), Zdenka (Strauss), La Fée (Massenet), Constance (Poulenc) and Giulietta (Bellini).  

A committed performer of contemporary music, Marie has been singing the roles of Mme Donnadieu in Isabelle Aboulker’s Martin Squelette, First Apple in Jonathan Dove’s The Little Green Swallow, Mrs P. from The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Michael Nyman and, most recently, The Maid in Elena Langer’s Four Sisters. Furthermore, she sang in the premiere of Geoffroy Colson’s L’esprit du feu at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2018. Also keen to work with young composers, Marie participated in the 2020-2021 Wigmore Voiceworks, a collaborative project between composers, writers and performers of the Guildhall School. On this occasion, she received the Tracey Chadwell Memorial Award for the Best Performance of a New Work for Voice for her performance of "Between Breaths" by composer Pia Rose Scatterwood and writer Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh (watch performance here).

Passionate about art songs repertoire, Marie has been learning from renowned collaborative pianists such as Iain Burnside, the late Dalton Baldwin, Sholto Kynoch, Julius Drake, Stacey Bartsch, Eugene Asti, Andrew West, Doriana Tchakarova, Sergei Rybin, Gary Matthewmann, Robin Bowman, Audrey Hyland, Dylan Perez and Malcolm Martineau. In 2021, Marie was honoured to be a Leeds Lieder Festival Young Artist and a semi-finalist of the prestigious Helmut Deutsch International Lied Competition. In 2022, Marie was part of Guildhall’s Song Guild led by acclaimed pianist Graham Johnson and performed at the Milton Court Concert Hall during his concert Poulenc: His Life and Songs. Most recently, Marie performed one of Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé under the baton of Cameron Burns on the occasion of RCS’ 175th Anniversary Celebrations.​

Marie is an alumna of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she obtained her Masters in Vocal Performance with Distinction under the tutelage of Professor Rudolf Piernay. She was a Young Artist at the 2019 International Festival Lyrique-en-Mer and a scholar of both the 2020 Lotte Lehman Akademie and the 2022 Oxenfoord Summer School. She holds a Bachelor in Law from Paris Descartes University (Parcours d’excellence).