The soprano Akie Amou studied at the Opera Institute of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music with Toshiko Toda, Renato Bruson and Francis Simar. In 1993 she moved to Europe with a scholarship from the Japanese Government Overseas Study Programme for Artists, continuing her studies in Stuttgart and in Berlin. Awarded several international prizes, she has worked with a number of notable conductors and orchestras, including the NHK Symphony Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch, the Dresden Saxon Staatskapelle under James Conlon, and with the conductors Alberto Zedda, Daniel Oren, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Daniel Barenboim and Seiji Ozawa. She sang the Queen of the Night and Gepopo in Ligeti’s Le grand macabre at the Berlin Comic Opera, Strauss’s Arabella at the Tokyo New National Theatre and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Dresden Semper Opera. She made her début at Rossini in Wildbad in the title rôle of Matilde di Shabran in 1998, afterwards singing the rôle of Matilde in Elisabetta Regina d’Inghilterra, as well as Amenaide in Tancredi and Corinna in Il viaggio a Reims under Alberto Zedda, a rôle that she also sang in Pesaro, Strasbourg and Royaumont. She lives in Berlin and Tokyo.