After French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a victory speech celebrating his re-election, he was joined on stage by Egyptian opera singer Farrah El Dibany, 33, who sang La Marseillaise, the French national anthem.
Dressed in a deep-red strapless gown, El Dibany was greeted on the Champ de Mars stage by the president, who kissed her on the hand.
The mezzo-soprano then sang the French national anthem, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. President Macron and his wife, Brigitte, remained on stage with El Dibany as she sang.
Who is Farrah El Dibany?
According to El Dibany's Opera National de Paris biography, she was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1989. As a young opera singer, she joined the Arts Centre of the Library of Alexandria in 2005.
She is fluent in Arabic, English, German, French and Italian.
In 2010, she moved to the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. The singer joined the Paris Opera Academy in September 2016, making her the first Arab opera singer to enter the academy. In 2019 she won Paris Opera's lyric award in its prestigious Prix de l'Arop category.
She held a solo performance at Dubai Opera in March 2020, days before the pandemic closed theatres and opera houses around the world.
"Opera is difficult at the moment … It’s not normal for us opera singers to do this virtual thing, we sing live," El Dibany told Vogue Arabia in 2020.
“I want to use my art — no matter what it is — to connect with people. I want people to love opera and to look for or listen to it from a different perspective.”
Earlier this month, El Dibany was awarded France’s Order of Arts and Letters (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) as a Chevalier (Knight), a medal that recognises significant contributions to the field of arts.
