Elina Garanca is a Latvian mezzo-soprano opera singer born in 1976 to a family of musicians, with her father being a choral director and mother a professor of music. She began singing in her hometown of Riga and won her first competition in Finland in 1999. Garanca studied singing at the Latvian Academy of Music and has had an illustrious international opera career, making her house debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 2008. She has won several awards for her work and remains in high demand for concerts around the world.