Winona, the new

Winner of the sixth edition of the "Voix des Outre-mer" competition last February, Winona Vettraino Berry continues to make her way in the world of opera singing. The mezzo-soprano has been selected along with eleven other young talents at a national audition to join the 2025/2026 class of Génération Opéra. Founded in 1970 as the Centre Français de Promotion Lyrique, Génération Opéra is an association of opera house directors from France, Belgium and Switzerland. Its aim is to encourage the discovery, professional integration and promotion of young opera artists. To achieve this, the association provides singers with a "corridor of access" between advanced training and career insertion, by running a number of visibility schemes. So, like the nine other opera artists and two pianists selected in the class of 2025-2026, Winona Vettraino Berry will be supported for two years by Génération Opéra to give her career a boost.
At last week's presentation concert for the new class at the Studio Bastille in Paris, Winona performed "Haï Luli" by composer (and mezzo-soprano!) Pauline Viardot (1821-1910).
The Saint-Barthélemy-born artist has a busy schedule, having sung as soloist in Mozart's Requiem fora benefit concert for the association "AVC tous concernés" with the Ensemble vocal de l'Océan and conductor Bastien Penas. Winona also performed her first operatic role as Margarita Malanotte, "a great diva, full of herself", she says with amusement.Opéra bouffe" at the Théâtre Antipolis in Antibes. "I'm just recovering from this experience, which was so enriching, fun and formative in so many ways," Winona commented on Instagram.