Frédérique Vézina
Frédérique Vézina is a Canadian operatic soprano. Vézina gained recognition when she made her Canadian Opera Company debut in 2002–2003 as Lisa and Mascha in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades. Critics hailed the arrival of a major presence on the operatic stage. Critic Robert Everett-Green of The Globe and Mail praised her "big Act III aria" as "eloquent testimony to the character's own addiction to emotional gambling." She was cast in the Canadian debut of The Handmaid's Tale in 2004. She was featured as Ellen Orford in Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes and Belinda in Dido and Aeneas. Vézina played Filumena at the National Arts Centre 28 April 2005 and 30 April.Career
Born in Montreal, Vézina attended the F.A.C.E. high school for performing arts, and graduated from CÉGEP Vanier College. Vézina completed a Bachelor of Music Degree at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in 2002. She placed first for three consecutive years at the National Association of Teachers of Singing competition and was awarded the Most Promising Singer prize in 1997. In 2002, at the Trois-Rivières Symphony competition, she was awarded the Grand Prize as well as a recital broadcast on CBC Radio. Vézina placed first at the National Music Festival competition in Calgary. She was a Metropolitan Opera semi-finalist in 2004 and a winner of the Début Inc Young Artists Competition.
Vézina received a Graduate Diploma from The Juilliard School of Music and was a lecturer at University of Western Ontario since 2011, and moved to the University of Toronto in 2013.
