Monica Yunus

Monica Yunus (born 1979) is an American operatic soprano who has performed with many opera companies and music ensembles. Reviewers from US dailies, The New York Times, the Charleston City Paper and the Palm Beach Daily News have described her voice as "especially winning", "utterly captivating" and "a voice destined for super-stardom" respectively. Her voice's performance range lies from a low A (A3) to a high F (F6). She performed regularly at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 2003-2014; appearing in several broadcasts of Metropolitan Opera Live in HD.

Monica Yunus was born in 1979 in Chittagong, Bangladesh to Muhammad Yunus, an economist and his then wife, Vera Forostenko, the daughter of Russian immigrants to Trenton, New Jersey. Yunus has one younger half-sister, Dina Yunus. Yunus' parents met in 1967 while attending Vanderbilt University. They were married in 1970. Yunus' parents' marriage ended within months of her birth, and Forostenko returned with Monica to the United States to live with her parents, claiming that Bangladesh was not a good place to raise a baby.

Yunus grew up in the home of her Russian grandparents in New Jersey where she learned to speak and write Russian and other Slavic languages as well as English. Yunus also speaks and writes fluently in Italian, Spanish, German, and French. Yunus' grandmother was highly influential in encouraging her interest in singing. At a very early age, Yunus' grandmother began taking her to sing in the choir at their Russian Orthodox Church, a choir Yunus would sing with throughout her entire childhood. It was while singing in this church choir that Yunus first fell in love with classical music.