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Emma Shapplin (France)
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November 24, 19:00
The State Kremlin Palace 
Emma Shapplin was born Marie-Ange Chapelain on 19 May 1974. Growing up in a suburb south of Paris, with her father (a policeman), her mother (a secretary) and two elder brothers, Marie-Ange was something of a tomboy in her early years. Indeed, the young Marie-Ange preferred a game of football or a spot of tree-climbing to any traditional female hobbies, and she showed no interest whatsoever in music or singing.
However, Marie-Ange's life would change dramatically at the age of 14 when one of her friends introduced her to a local singing teacher. This 70-year-old teacher, a former singer herself, began giving lessons to Marie-Ange. The young teenager, who had never displayed any particular aptitude for study - schoolwork bored Marie-Ange to death! -suddenly developed a veritable passion for music. Indeed, Marie-Ange spent all her free time practising her scales and training her voice. And, under the careful supervision of her singing teacher, the talented young teenager soon began to reveal an exceptional soprano voice.
Despite making excellent progress with her teacher, Marie-Ange received little encouragement from her family. On the contrary, after she had been taking singing lessons for over a year, her parents refused to let her continue her training. They also banned her from attending school choir practice and began to push her towards what they considered to be a more "serious" career. This proved to be an extremely distressing period for Marie-Ange. Increasingly, the young teenager resisted her parents' desire to transform her into a secretary, and clung to her ambition of launching a career as a professional singer. Secretly, Marie-Ange still harboured dreams of performing the "Queen of The Night" aria from Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute".
In the end Marie-Ange had to settle for something a little less grand. A local hard rock group, North Wind, offered to take her on as their lead singer, and Marie-Ange immediately took up the offer. Over the next three years, the young singer would abandon her soprano scales and work on perfecting a deep, gravely voice better suited to North Wind's hard rock lyrics. Meanwhile, Marie-Ange gave in to her parents' wishes and began studying for her secretarial "baccalaureat". She failed her secretarial exams at the age of 18, but this failure did not appear to bother Marie-Ange at all. The young teenager's sights were set on totally different things.
Marie-Ange who soon went on to change her stage name to Emma left home at the age of 19 to move into her own flat in Paris. Life in the Big City proved to be no easy option, however, and Marie-Ange/Emma was forced to do a whole series of odd jobs to survive. But she did not seem to mind too much. For, in winning independence from her parents, the young teenager was free to take up her singing again and she soon went on to enrol for music lessons with teachers from the Paris Conservatoire.
After re-training her voice to professional standards, Emma Shapplin went on to record her first demo tape. With a little help from a friend of a friend, Emma soon got the chance to play the cassette to the well-known French singer Jean-Patrick Capdevielle. Capdevielle was immediately captivated by Emma's voice and the pair soon realised they shared a mutual passion for opera. Recognising Emma's impressive vocal talent, Capdevielle offered to write an album for her and the pair gradually built up a working relationship. Shapplin and Capdevielle experimented with a number of different musical directions (including grunge!) but in the end they decided to base Emma's first album on classical music.
Jean-Patrick Capdevielle immediately set about writing the material for Emma's first album, with the aid of his son Jonathan (who helped out on "Miserere, Venere"). Capdevielle wrote nine songs for the new album, and Emma stepped in to collaborate on four of these. The lyrics, which Capdevielle originally wrote in French were then translated into Latin and ancient Provencal dialect by an Italian medievalist. As for the musical arrangements on Emma's first album, these were all based on the work of legendary 19th century Italian composers (ranging from Donizetti to Bellini). Her first album Carmine Meo (1998) represents her debut step as a professional artist. Indeed, Ms. Shapplin was soon being hailed as a classical "Diva" for the 90's.
"Spente le stelle" and "Cuor Senza Sangue", the first single releases from Emma Shapplin's album, soon earned the young French singer an enthusiastic following of fans. Following the success of the singles, "Carmine Meo" rocketed to the top of the French album charts, selling 100,000 copies in just three months (thereby earning Emma Shapplin her first gold disc!) This phenomenal success was soon echoed on the international market - indeed, foreign sales of "Carmine Meo" quickly went on to rival those back home.
Given the success of European "classical variete" acts such as Andrea Bocelli and Andre Rieu, it came as no surprise to anyone when Emma Shapplin's album became an overnight hit on the international music scene. Distributed in 26 countries on all five continents, "Carmine Meo" soared to the top of the charts worldwide - occasionally even overtaking Celine Dion and Madonna's albums in the charts! Emma Shapplin soon went on to become a household name in Greece, Lebanon, Canada , Mexico and even as far afield as New Zealand.
A few years later Emma was invited by composer Graeme Revell to sing three original and graceful tracks based on poetry of Dante from his score for the Hollywood movie Red Planet - a soundtrack that she shared with Peter Gabriel and Sting. For her second album Etterna, which was released in September 2002, Emma, a great lover of poetry and literature, wrote all the lyrics directly in medieval Italian, playing with time and styles using, as she says, many "carefully chosen archaic words and expressions" in order to evoke the great ancient poets, playwrights and their works, even including, for example, fragments of Sappho's poetry.
 In terms of the music itself, Emma was interested in developing compositions with another artist as well and consequently invited Graeme Revell to join her, whom she enjoyed working with on Red Planet and who eventually composed half of the music on Etterna. As Emma likes to explain, "He brought his maturity and the smoothness of his orchestration."
One of Emma's most extraordinary collaborations occurred when the London Philharmonic Orchestra accompanied her, playing her and Revell's composition scores at Abbey Road Studio. With the London Philharmonic Choir singing as well, Emma was absolutely in heaven. The experience was a very special moment that was truly unforgettable and magical.
As with her first album, Emma wanted Etterna to evoke a little world in itself. If Carmine Meo was a world of fire and earth, Etterna was imagined as a world surrounded by water and air - a world emerged from the fog and vanishing through tormented water with fairy-like characters finding their way through the darkness and unlighted mists, surveying the ocean floor, reflective and waiting for an escape.
Carmine Meo sold over two million copies around the world and became multi-platinum many times, which gave her start and introduced her work to more than 25 countries. Her second album Etterna led Emma to experience very remarkable and bewitching stage performances, which she produced and staged herself.
Although the "Etterna Show" continued to play for many years around the world, widely acclaimed and frequently with standing ovations, it was never video-recorded in its entirety. An excerpt can be found on Emma's official website, which is a long version of an EPK produced by Nimue Music.
Emma has performed many times and in some of the most amazing places around the world, including the Acropolis in Athens, as well as the Olympia arena in Greece, the Kremlin Grand Palace in Moscow, the Esplanade Opera House in Singapore, the Cesarea Arena in Israel, the theatre Carre in Holland, in a newly excavated open air Roman Mausoleum near Belgrade for 10 000 people, at an open air concert on the site of an immense temple in Bali, on the Tunisian seashore, in Monaco for an ice skating event hosted by Prince Albert, and at Hammamet, to name but a few.
Emma released her new album Macadam Flower in 2010. It is pop, synth, electro album composed and written by Emma Shapplin in 3 languages (English, French and poetic ancient Italian).
Emma Shapplin's brand new opus shows she is determined and unafraid of change, yet still full of sensuality and soul. This is not the Emma you know, the neoclassical diva with a soprano voice as from an angel choir, but a completely reinvented artist with a revamped, fresh style of music and vocal interpretation that pulls this album onwards into the core of the future by means of an intricate and immersive blend of soft rock, pop and neoclassical styles. Emma is also the songwriter of this new album, which simultaneously enchants and inspires with heights of sensuality and beauty, revealing the rise of a new soundscape for the sensory experience.
The new live DVD of her newest show "The Macadam Flower Tour" is a journey through her diverse vocal and musical approaches that embrace these diverse forms including opera, pop- rock synthpop and neo-classical.
More info
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