Rising US opera star goes back to her roots

Dhaka: In a country never known for its sopranos, rising star Monica Yunus wants to bring a little opera to her homeland - and maybe take a little bit of Bangladesh back to the United States with her.

Nearly three decades after leaving Bangladesh as a four-month-old, Yunus says she is eager to explore her Asian roots.

Yunus, a soprano with New York's Metropolitan Opera, returned recently to Bangladesh for the first time, a trip she called 'life-changing.'

She reconnected with her Bangladeshi father, Muhammed Yunus, a pioneer in microfinance programmes now used for in poverty-alleviation around the world. She also discovered Jatra, a traditional form of Bangladeshi musical theatre she says is close to classical Western opera. And, of course, she began studying Bangla, the national tongue.

"I don't know any Bangla songs, but I want to learn. I want to learn about Bangla music and work with Bangladeshi musicians," she added. Yunus also wants to bring Bangladeshi musicians into her Sing for Hope charity project to raise funds for Bangladeshi girls and women. She plans to dedicate much of the money she raises to educating the country's women, many of whom are unable to complete their schooling.

For now, though, she has no immediate plans to live and work in Bangladesh.

Her father founded Grameen Bank, a microcredit lender that has been instrumental in helping millions of poor Bangladeshis, many of them women, improve their standard of living by letting them borrow small sums to start businesses. In the past, Grameen loans often went to buy cows to start a diary or chickens for an egg business.

Yunus was born in the southern port city of Chittagong in 1977, but her parents separated soon after and her Russian mother, Vera, took her to the United States.

She began taking formal singing lessons when she was eleven and went on to graduate in 2002 from the Juilliard School in New York with a Master of Music degree.

Yunus has appeared with various operas in the United States and Europe since making her professional debut with Palm Beach Operas in 1999. She first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 2003.

In Dhaka, she faced a small audience of family and friends, where she performed arias from popular operas by Mozart and Puccini.

Yunus told guests before the performance started, using some of her newly acquired Bangla: "My mother tells me that many of you heard my very first high notes my screams as a baby."