Nathalie Peña-Comas is a Dominican soprano. She is the country’s leading bel canto voice, serves as its cultural ambassador, and has been nominated for a Latin Grammy and won several Soberanos.

Early years and formation

She started on the flute at eight. By thirteen she had decided she wanted to be an artist, and the voice took over from the instrument.

The international stages

She sang Cavalleria Rusticana with a Roman orchestra in the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore at Easter. She made her Helsinki debut on 6 October 2024, alongside her sister, the cellist Nicole Peña-Comas, and the Chilean pianist Hugo Llanos Campos, and closed that year with opera concerts in Vienna.

She had already taken first place in an international competition in 2022. For a Dominican classical singer this is the rarest kind of career: the country produces excellent voices and almost no route out of it, and she built one.

Beyond the opera house

She works as an actress as well, and she does not treat the popular repertoire as beneath the trained voice — she has released a video of Esclavo y Amo, a bolero, sung as a soprano rather than sung down to.

She describes what she does as an attempt to add beauty to the world, and speaks about music as something mystical rather than technical, which is not the usual register for a singer with her training.