She is Danielle de Niese, a 26-year-old Australian-American soprano whose star has been soaring over the past two years, and Decca Classics has just signed her to an exclusive contract.

Raised in Los Angeles, de Niese studied piano and dance as well as voice, and she hosted a television program on the arts for which she won an Emmy Award. She graduated from the Metropolitan Opera's Young Artist Development Program, and she made her Met debut when only 19 years old. (She played Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro; her castmates included Bryn Terfel, Cecilia Bartoli and Ren_e Fleming.)

She really grabbed the attention of the opera world (and garnered those rave reviews) at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival in 2005, putting her vocal and dance training to use as Cleopatra in David McVicar's Bollywood-inspired staging of Handel's Giulio Cesare. (She'll sing the role at the Metropolitan Opera this spring, on April 24 and 27.)

Since then — still in her mid-20s — she has sung (among other places) at the Op_ra national de Paris, the Netherlands Opera, the Zurich Opera House, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony.

De Niese will make her first disc for Decca, of Handel arias, with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants.