Egyptian mezzo-soprano Farrah El Dibany made an impression on French President Emmanuel Macron when she performed songs by Fairouz and Dalida at the Institut du Monde Arabe in July 2021.
"He told me, 'Your voice really touched me,'" El Dibany, 33, tells The National.
Fast-forward to April this year, and the rising star was asked to sing the French national anthem at Macron’s victory event after having been awarded the prestigious Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) by the French government.
“Definitely it’s a very important milestone for me,” she says. “I represented Egypt, I represented opera … It was historical. It is something that will always mark my life.”
Much like Amanda Gorman, who was propelled to fame when she read her poem The Hill We Climb at the 2021 inauguration of US President Joe Biden, the performance put El Dibany in the international spotlight.
With several notable achievements to her name, El Dibany, who was born in Alexandria, is blazing a trail for young Egyptian opera singers — and she is only just getting started. She says she intends to keep up her international performances, record an album this year and prepare for the ideal roles she would like to play over the next decade.
The road to opera
As a girl, El Dibany did not know that she wanted to be an opera singer.
“I didn’t plan for this,” she says.
She sang in the choir at her German school and was introduced to opera through her grandfather, who enjoyed listening to operatic classics. At aged 14, she started voice lessons with Egyptian soprano Neveen Allouba and began participating in international singing competitions.
In 2005, El Dibany entered the Arts Centre of the Alexandria Library. Following her high school graduation, she started studying architecture at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport in Alexandria before deciding to move to Berlin in 2010 to attend the Hanns-Eisler Academy of Music.
At one point she was studying for two degrees at the same time, earning both a master’s from the Berlin University of the Arts and a bachelor’s in architecture at Berlin’s Technische Universitat. Along the way she took high-level Italian courses, adding to her fluent Arabic, English, German and French.
She nabbed the title role of Carmen at Berlin venue the Neukollner Oper in 2015. The following year, she moved to Paris and became the first Arab opera singer to enter the Paris Opera Academy. She went on to win the Paris Opera’s high-status Prix Lyrique de l’Arop award in 2019.
Career highlights
El Dibany counts the Prix de l’Arop award as one of the highlights of her career, as well as being honoured as a chevalier (knight) with the Order of Arts and Letters award.
“I didn’t expect it and it was nice recognition from France,” she says.
The medal recognises significant contributions to the field of arts. Fellow Egyptian recipients include Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, artist and women’s activist Inji Aflatoun, novelist Alaa Al Aswany, composer and conductor Hisham Gabr, and more recently film producer Mohamed Hefzy.
In addition to the Berlin and Paris opera houses and top venues in Cairo and Alexandria, El Dibany has performed all over the world, including at the Bolshoi in Moscow, the Venice Art Biennale, Dubai Opera and the Beirut Chants Festival.
Among her favourites was an event in November celebrating the 75th anniversary of Unesco at its Paris headquarters, attended by 30 heads of state including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi.
Last Tuesday, she was back in her home town to perform at the Biblioteca Alexandrina, marking the 20th anniversary of its revival.
On June 3, she will perform a concert at the Petit Palais art museum in Paris and receive yet another award celebrating her achievements in the arts, this time from La Fondation Signature-Institut de France.
New projects
Although it is still in the concept stage, El Dibany hopes to begin recording an album of Dalida songs and famous mezzo-soprano arias by the end of this year.
“Now I’m starting to feel I’m ready to do an album, so I’m working on it,” she says.
Two roles that she would love to play in the next five to 10 years include Dalila in Samson and Dalila and Amneris in the opera Aida.
“This is something I’m working on now, just to have it in my voice,” she says. “Strong voices take more time to develop, more time to mature.”
Her role models include her American voice coach Janet Williams, Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca, American-Canadian soprano Sondra Dee Radvanovsky and the late American opera singer Jessye Mae Norman.
Incidentally, Norman was invited to sing the French national anthem in 1989 in honour of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution.
“She’s a huge inspiration. By coincidence, she was the only non-French who sang the national anthem in France,” El Dibany says.
Blazing a trail
El Dibany and other well-known Egyptian opera singers, such as Fatma Said, have blazed a trail and elevated interest in opera.
“This generation did a different thing to opera in Egypt,” she says. “There is much more interest among the younger generation … there is more confidence that it’s possible, that it’s not that far.”
At the same time, she cautions that it is a high-pressured field that is extremely selective and perfectionist.
“It’s a very difficult path and very competitive and mentally not easy, so don’t think you’ll just be singing in la-la land, living in a pink world,” El Dibany says. “You really have to be determined to do this career.”
Along with triumphs, El Dibany has seen her fair share of disappointments. But she says she never had to make an “extra effort” to prove herself just because she is Egyptian or Arab.
“Opera has many different nationalities. It’s a very international career,” she says. “You prove yourself with your voice.”
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-finals, first leg
Liverpool v Roma
When: April 24, 10.45pm kick-off (UAE)
Where: Anfield, Liverpool
Live: BeIN Sports HD
Second leg: May 2, Stadio Olimpico, Rome
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Ten tax points to be aware of in 2026
1. Domestic VAT refund amendments: request your refund within five years
If a business does not apply for the refund on time, they lose their credit.
2. E-invoicing in the UAE
Businesses should continue preparing for the implementation of e-invoicing in the UAE, with 2026 a preparation and transition period ahead of phased mandatory adoption.
3. More tax audits
Tax authorities are increasingly using data already available across multiple filings to identify audit risks.
4. More beneficial VAT and excise tax penalty regime
Tax disputes are expected to become more frequent and more structured, with clearer administrative objection and appeal processes. The UAE has adopted a new penalty regime for VAT and excise disputes, which now mirrors the penalty regime for corporate tax.
5. Greater emphasis on statutory audit
There is a greater need for the accuracy of financial statements. The International Financial Reporting Standards standards need to be strictly adhered to and, as a result, the quality of the audits will need to increase.
6. Further transfer pricing enforcement
Transfer pricing enforcement, which refers to the practice of establishing prices for internal transactions between related entities, is expected to broaden in scope. The UAE will shortly open the possibility to negotiate advance pricing agreements, or essentially rulings for transfer pricing purposes.
7. Limited time periods for audits
Recent amendments also introduce a default five-year limitation period for tax audits and assessments, subject to specific statutory exceptions. While the standard audit and assessment period is five years, this may be extended to up to 15 years in cases involving fraud or tax evasion.
8. Pillar 2 implementation
Many multinational groups will begin to feel the practical effect of the Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax (DMTT), the UAE's implementation of the OECD’s global minimum tax under Pillar 2. While the rules apply for financial years starting on or after January 1, 2025, it is 2026 that marks the transition to an operational phase.
9. Reduced compliance obligations for imported goods and services
Businesses that apply the reverse-charge mechanism for VAT purposes in the UAE may benefit from reduced compliance obligations.
10. Substance and CbC reporting focus
Tax authorities are expected to continue strengthening the enforcement of economic substance and Country-by-Country (CbC) reporting frameworks. In the UAE, these regimes are increasingly being used as risk-assessment tools, providing tax authorities with a comprehensive view of multinational groups’ global footprints and enabling them to assess whether profits are aligned with real economic activity.
Contributed by Thomas Vanhee and Hend Rashwan, Aurifer
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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
