Car attended Strathmore Secondary School, where she performed in school musicals. In Year 12 she sang at the Victorian Schools' Spectacular, singing jazz songs from the 1930s and 40s.[4]
At age 17, Car saw her first opera, Tosca, in her final year of high school in Melbourne. She then completed a Bachelor of Music at the Victorian College of the Arts, rather than the legal degree her parents had hoped for.[5]
She made her American debut singing the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro at Dallas Opera in 2014, a role previously performed for Opera Australia.[2] Car made her Covent Garden debut in 2015, singing Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen, followed by Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and a new production of La bohème as Mimì in the 2017/18 season. In 2020 she returned to the Royal Opera House as Mimì.[4] Car had previously performed the role of Micaëla for Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour in 2013.[7]
In a review of her first recording, The Kiss, Car is described as possessing "a lovely lyric soprano".[8]
In 2019 Car visited Australia to sing the role of Ellen in a recital version of the Benjamin Britten opera Peter Grimes with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In Sydney she was joined by her husband Étienne Dupuis [fr] and sang a series of concerts together.[9] In the 2019/2020 season, she performed Tatyana to Étienne Dupuis' Eugene Onegin for Opera Australia at the Sydney Opera House. The duo went on to sing in Eugene Onegin in at Montreal Opera House in 2019, with Car making her Canadian debut.[10]
In Germany, Car has performed at the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Tatyana, Fiordiligi, Marguerite.Verdi Gala, Thaïs), the Semperoper Dresden (Mimì, Fiordiligi) and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich (Tatyana).
Car made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the role of Mimì (La bohème) in September 2018, receiving critical acclaim from The New York Times for her "fine-grained tone and nuanced acting".[11][12] She returned to the Met in 2020 as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte.
Performances at the Paris Opera have included Tatyana, Mimì, Micaëla and her role debut as Elisabetta di Valois in Don Carlos in the 2019/2020 season. She also sang the role of Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni in a new production at the Paris Opera which was broadcast by many international cinemas.[13]
In April 2020 Car launched the Freelance Artist Relief Australia fund, a crowd-sourced trust dedicated to supporting Australian freelance artists during the Covid-19 pandemic.[14]
At 21, while in her final year at the Victorian College of the Arts, Car won the 2007 Herald Sun Aria, performing arias by Verdi and Puccini. In making the announcement, chief adjudicator Anson Austin said she has "a wonderful talent and a most beautiful voice".[21]
In 2013 Car won joint first prize in the Neue Stimmen vocal competition held in Germany.[22]
