Clara Barbier Serrano to perform at Hayy Jameel after concert with Andrea Bocelli in AlUla

• French soprano Clara Barbier Serrano will sing Mozart, Puccini and more in a free recital at Hayy Jameel in Jeddah on Saturday, January 22, 2022, at 8 pm
• Clara is the inaugural Bocelli-Jameel Scholar at the Royal College of Music in London, supported by the Andrea Bocelli Foundation and Community Jameel

French soprano Clara Barbier Serrano will perform at Hayy Jameel this Saturday, January 22, 2022, at 8 pm. Clara will sing arias by composers such as Purcell, Handel, Mozart, and Puccini, taking the audience on a journey through the history of opera in Europe from the 17th to the 20th centuries. The first performance of classical music at Hayy Jameel, Clara will be accompanied by a pianist for an intimate recital that is free to attend and open to all via registration on the Hayy Jameel website.

Clara travels to Jeddah from AlUla, where she is performing on January 21 alongside renowned tenor Andrea Bocelli in a sold-out concert at the award-winning Maraya in the Winter at Tantora festival.

The inaugural recipient of the Bocelli-Jameel Scholarship at the Royal College of Music in London, Clara has performed with Bocelli in the 2020 ‘Believe in Christmas’ concert at the Teatro Regio di Parma, at the annual Concerto di Natale in Assisi in 2020, and in 2021 at the Teatro di Silenzio in the Maestro’s Tuscan hometown of Lajatico.

The scholarship, established by the Andrea Bocelli Foundation and Community Jameel in 2019 to support up-and-coming singers to study opera at the Royal College of Music, is awarded on merit at audition and need. Open to students from around the world, the second Bocelli-Jameel Scholar is Laura Mekhail from Egypt. Community Jameel, which supports the Scholarship, and Art Jameel, which runs Hayy Jameel, are sister organisations founded by the Jameel family of Saudi Arabia.

“I am excited to be in Saudi Arabia for the first time and to be performing at two pioneering centres for the arts: the Maraya in AlUla, and Hayy Jameel in Jeddah,” said Clara. “It is an honour to be appearing alongside Maestro Bocelli, and to be welcomed by the Jameel family to Jeddah.”

Clara has developed a rich and diversified repertoire through performances with the Ensemble 1684, the Staatskapelle Halle, and pianists Eric Schneider and Alexander Schmalcz. She premiered the piece ‘O’ by Fojan Garibnejad, and is part of the dance and interdisciplinary artists company Juliette Rahon & Co. Clara has previously performed in opera productions at the Leipzig Opera, Royal College of Music and Verbier Festival Academy.

The Bocelli-Jameel Scholarship is one of a number of collaborations between Community Jameel and the Royal College of Music in London. In 2016, Community Jameel invited music students from the College to perform in Riyadh, including at the British Embassy. Since then, as well as the Bocelli-Jameel Scholarship, Community Jameel created the Community Jameel Hardship Fund in 2020 for students facing unexpected financial difficulties, with particular support for students from the Arab world. The fund has been vitally important during COVID-19, when lockdowns and social distancing severely limited opportunities to perform publicly, depriving students of an important source of income. The first major beneficiary of the Hardship Fund is the Tunisian violinist Bacem Anas Romdhani.