Michelle DeYoung was raised in Colorado and California. In opera she has performed at the Metropolitan Opera; the Lyric Opera of Chicago; the Houston Grand Opera; the Seattle Opera; the Washington Concert Opera; the Glimmerglass Opera; La Scala, Milan; the Bayreuth Festival; Berliner Staatsoper; the Opera National de Paris; the Opera de Nice; the Thèâtre du Châtelet, Basel Opera and the Tokyo Opera. Her many roles include Fricka, Sieglinde and Waltraute (Der Ring Des Nibelungen); Kundry (Parsifal), Venus (Tannhäuser), Brangäne (Tristan und Isolde), Dido (Les Troyens), Eboli (Don Carlos), Amneris (Aida), Marguerite (Le Damnation de Faust), Judith (Bluebeard’s Castle), Gertrude (Hamlet), Jocaste (Oedipus Rex), and the title roles in Samson et Dalilah and The Rape of Lucretia. She also created the role of the Shaman in Tan Dun’s The First Emperor at the Metropolitan Opera.

Ms DeYoung has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, The Met Orchestra (in Carnegie Hall), the Met Chamber Ensemble, Vienna Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Bayerische Staatsoper Orchestra, Berliner Staatskapelle, Sao Paulo Symphony, and the Concertgebouworkest. She has also appeared at the festivals of Ravinia, Tanglewood, Aspen, Cincinnati, Saito Kinen, Edinburgh, Salzburg, and Lucerne.

The conductors with whom she has worked include Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Sir Colin Davis, Stéphane Denève, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gustavo Dudamel, Christoph Eschenbach, Edward Gardner, Bernard Haitink, Manfred Honeck, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano, Seiji Ozawa, Antonio Pappano, Andre Previn, David Robertson, Donald Runnicles, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mariss Jansons, and Michael Tilson Thomas.

In recital, she has appeared at the Lincoln Center; Carnegie Hall; San Francisco Symphony’s Great Performances series; Cal Performances in Berkeley; Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto; the Thèâtre du Châtelet; the Gulbenkian; the Edinburgh Festival; London’s Wigmore Hall and Brussels’s La Monnaie.

Her recordings include Kindertotenlieder and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony which was awarded the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Classical Album. She has also been awarded the 2001 Grammy Awards for Best Classical Album and Best Opera Recording for Les Troyens with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra. Her discography also includes a recording of Mahler Symphony No 3 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Bernard Haitink; Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1, ‘Jeremiah’ with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin for Chandos, Das Klagende Lied with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas for BMG, and Das Lied von der Erde with the Minnesota Orchestra for Reference Recordings. Her first solo disc was released on the EMI label.