on the 75th anniversary of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival
The peak of the anniversary edition of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival will be the spectacular Opera Gala, held in a magnificent setting in front of the Cathedral, where one of today's biggest opera stars, Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva, Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja and one of the most sought-after basses on the international scene, Ante Jerkunica, will perform. They will be joined by the Croatian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the renowned conductor and a festival audience favourite, Ivan Repušić.
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Giuseppe Verdi: Nabucco – Overture
Giuseppe Verdi: Il trovatore (The Troubadour) - Leonora's aria "Tacea la notte placida"
Gioachino Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) – Don Basilio’s aria "La calunnia"
Jules Massenet: Le Cid – Rodrigo's aria "Ah! Tout est bien fini"
Giacomo Puccini: Le Villi (The Fairies) – Anna's aria "Se come voi piccina"
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin – Prince Gremin's aria "Ljubvi vsje vozrasti pakorni”
Charles Gounod: Faust – Waltz
Charles Gounod: Faust – Faust and Méphistophélès' duet "À moi, les plaisirs"
Giacomo Puccini: Madama Butterfly - Cio-Cio-San's aria "Un bel dì vedremo"
Giacomo Puccini: Manon Lescaut – Act III Intermezzo
Giacomo Puccini: Tosca – Act I duet of Cavaradossi and Tosca
Giacomo Puccini: Le Villi (The Fairies) – "La Tregenda"
Giacomo Puccini: Tosca – Cavaradossi's aria "E lucevan le stelle”
Giacomo Puccini: Tosca – Tosca's aria "Vissi d'arte"
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Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Busseto, 1813 – Milan, 1901) wrote 28 Romantic operas and his name eventually became synonymous with opera. He achieved great success with operas from his middle period – Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. His later works include Aida, Requiem, Otello, Falstaff, etc. He was politically active as an advocate of unification of Italy, and he initiated and financed building of a home for retired musicians. Verdi considered himself ‘the least learned of all composers’, but the melodiousness of his arias, expressiveness of his vocal and orchestral lines, instrumental highlighting of the atmosphere, as well as his close collaboration with librettists and dramatic characterisation, created his praised, distinctive musical style.
Nabucco was Verdi’s third opera, from 1841, originally entitled Nabucodonosor. The plot follows the plight of the Jews, who are assaulted and exiled by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (chorus ‘Va, pensiero..’). The historical and political events in the opera serve as the background for a romantic plot.
Il trovatore was composed in 1853, to a libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the Spanish play Il trovador by Antonio García Guiterrez. The ‘formalism’ for which Verdi was criticized at the time, is today considered to have a balancing effect on the intensely emotional plot and characters in the work characterized by the immediacy of language, a complex libretto, and somewhat restrained melodies with strong orchestral accompaniment. The content of the opera is notoriously complicated, but the core consists of four main characters: The Troubadour from the title is Manrico, a 15th century nobleman. He is a son and heir of Count di Luna, who was stolen as a child by the gypsy Azucena out of revenge for the death of her mother, and raised as her own, which all happened before the plot of the opera. In the present time, Manrico and his, unknown to him, half-brother, the new Count di Luna, are in love with the same woman, Leonora. In the scene ‘Tacea la notte...’, Leonora tells how someone serenaded her, a knight in black whom she once crowned as the winner at a tournament, and her love for him seems to develop in real time, from the peaceful beginning of the scene to the climax of the cabaletta.
‘Eating, loving, singing and digesting are, in truth, the four acts of the comic opera known as life and they pass like bubbles of a bottle of champagne.’ These are the words of Gioachino Rossini (Pesaro, 1792 – Passy, Paris, 1868), the most important Italian composer of the first half of the 19th century. Both his musical and non-musical activities are associated with lightness and hedonism, but there was a special musical artistry behind them. Rossini grew up in theatres in which his father, a trumpeter and hornist, and his mother, a singer, performed. He played several instruments, trained in singing and performed as a boy soprano. He then played the harpsichord in theatres and started composing his first arias, studying composition in Bologna and the works of Haydn and Mozart. He had a contract with two theatres in Naples and wrote one new opera for each every year, but he soon started writing for many other theatres as well. He travelled throughout Europe and had a string of operatic successes in Italy, Vienna and Paris, where he occasionally lived and spent the final 14 years of his life. He was also renowned for his gastronomic skills. Rossini refined opera buffa and developed opera seria, wrote works that require considerable virtuosity and referred to himself as ‘the last of the Classics’. He composed numerous instrumental pieces, but is best known for his comic operas, as well as other vocal works.
Rossini composed The Barber of Seville to a libretto by Cesare Sterbini based on a comedy by Pierre de Beaumarchais; it premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in 1816.
In the aria ‘La Calunnia’ (‘Calumny’), Don Basilio encourages slandering, spreading lies about a love rival: he explains to his employer, the old and rich doctor, Don Bartolo, that he should spread false rumours about Count Almaviva, to prevent him from seducing young Rosina, whom Bartolo wants for himself.
Jules Massenet (Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet, Montaud, 1842 – Paris, 1912) was a French opera composer, known for his lyricism and sentimentality. Like many French composers, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire (under Ambroise Thomas) and received the prestigious Prix de Rome scholarship for his cantata. Massenet wrote 24 operas, the most successful of which was Manon.
‘Tout est bien fini’ is the prayer of Rodrigo from Le Cid, Act 3, premiered in 1885 and composed to a libretto by Gallet, Blau and d’Ennery, based on the tragedy in verse of the same title by Pierre Corneille. Rodrigo or Rodrigue was a real Castilian knight, who lived in the 11th century. He earned the Arabic honorific as-Sayid (‘the Lord’ or ‘the Master’), which would evolve into El Cid in Spain. In the aria, he calls out ‘Oh Lord, oh judge, oh father..’, and says that he will obey and keep the Christian faith, even though his dreams have been destroyed.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Votkinsk, 1840 – Saint Petersburg, 1893) is the most popular Russian and, for many, the ‘most Romantic’ composer. His music is characterised by rich melodies and colours, dramatic intensity, meticulous orchestration and national elements – today, the elements of his style are considered the sound of the ‘Russian soul’, but in a cosmopolitan form. He studied composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory under Anton Rubinstein, and later taught at the Moscow Conservatory. Tchaikovsky’s most famous works are his symphonies, operas Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, three piano concertos and a violin concerto, and he also wrote other music for the stage, cantatas and choral works, pieces for orchestra, art songs, numerous pieces for piano, and chamber music.
Eugene Onegin (1878) was Tchaikovsky’s fifth opera. He based it on Pushkin's work of the same name and wrote: ‘I am enchanted by Pushkin’s poetry, whose irresistible appeal simply compels me to compose.’ Prince Gremin is the husband of Tatyana, whose love Onegin rejected long ago. Later, he discovers that he loves her, but it is too late. Gremin sings about the fact that ‘both old and young’ must submit to the power of love.
Charles (François) Gounod (Paris, 1818 – Saint-Cloud, 1893) was a French composer, organist and conductor best known for his vocal music, especially operas, and rich, sometimes sentimental melodies and skilled orchestration. He described his music as ‘classical in expression, romantic in thought’. After completing his studies, he won the coveted Prix de Rome in 1839, in his third attempt, for the cantata Fernand, and spent three years at Villa Medici in Rome.
Gounod wrote Faust to a libretto by Barbier and Carré, based on Goethe’s Faust. In the duet ‘À moi, les plaisirs’ between Faust and Méphistophélès, Faust admits that he longs for youth, and Méphistophélès says that he can give it to him: on Earth he will be in Faust’s service if Faust agrees to serve him in Hell. To convince him, Méphistophélès shows him a vision of Marguerite, Faust’s beloved, at her spinning wheel. In the Waltz, Méphistophélès is joined by Faust and the peasants.
This year, the centenary of the death of perhaps the last in a long line of Italian opera masters, Giacomo Antonio Puccini (Lucca, 1858 – Brussels, 1924), is celebrated around the world and at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. He came from a family of church musicians, and started out as one himself. Although he wrote some of the world’s most appreciated operas, which remain at the core of the operatic repertoire, music historians and critics did not always take him seriously, considering him too commercial, prone to manipulating and shocking the audiences. His works are exceptionally dramatic and sentimental, with characters developed to detail, and characterised by skilful orchestration and his gift for melody. Most of Puccini’s operas have a young female protagonist who sacrifices herself or is sacrificed for a cruel man.
‘Se come voi’ is Anna’s romance from Le Villi, Puccini’s less frequently performed opera, or opera-ballet, and his first work for the stage, composed to a libretto by Ferdinando Fontana. He wrote it for the competition of the publisher Sonzogno in 1883, but did not win. His friends supported him and helped him stage the work, which was well received. The plot follows young Anna, who is abandoned by her fiancé Roberto and dies of a broken heart. Women like her become ‘villi’ – fairies, or ghosts that make unfaithful men dance to exhaustion. In this aria, Anna is still waiting for Roberto, innocently singing to the flowers around her. We will also hear a part of the intermezzo between the two acts, La Tregenda, which means ‘ghost’, ‘spectre’, and represents ghosts dancing in a winter night.
‘Un bel dì’ is one of the most famous opera arias, from Madama Butterfly (1904), composed to a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. In the aria, the geisha Cio-Cio-San assures her maid Suzuki that Pinkerton, the American whom Cio-Cio-San loves and father of her child, will return to her from the USA. After three years, Suzuki doesn’t believe it will happen, but Cio-Cio-San imagines every detail of his return and her happiness once she sees him again.
The opera Manon Lescaut from 1893 was Puccini’s first major success, which came before his most famous works, La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot. Five librettists worked on the opera, based on Abbé (abbot) Prevost’s Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality, in which Puccini combined Wagnerian leitmotifs and the Italian idea of dramma in musica, in a complex symphonic structure. He borrowed the first theme of the opera, which takes us to the 18th century, from his own string quartet, and at the end of the opera he brings back themes from the previous acts, as he will do in later operas. Manon Lescaut is a story of the charming Manon, who falls in love with the student Des Grieux and goes with him to Paris, instead of going to the convent, where her father has sent her, but then she chooses the luxury and security of the relationship with the rich Geronte. When she returns to her first lover, Geronte has her arrested for theft and exiled to America, where Des Grieux joins her.
The opera Tosca, first performed in 1900 and written to a libretto by Illica and Giacosa, based on Sardou’s play of the same name, is one of the most popular and appreciated operas in the standard repertoire. Tosca is art that ‘talks’ about art and artists, but also about politics and love. Floria Tosca is an opera singer who is in a relationship with the painter Cavaradossi. He is helping Angelotti, who is fighting against the wicked and powerful head of the Roman police, Scarpia. Scarpia wants Tosca for himself and tries to blackmail her: he demands that she gives herself to him if she wants Cavaradossi to survive. Tosca kills Scarpia, but the painter does not survive, so she throws herself to her death.
In the duet from Act 1, Cavaradossi assures Tosca that there is no reason to be jealous, even though another woman is in his painting, and that the eyes of other women cannot compare to Tosca’s; Tosca admits that he has won her over.
In the aria ‘E lucevan’ from Act 3, Cavaradossi, awaiting execution, recalls Tosca’s embrace and her kisses, when ‘the stars shone brightly’; and now, when he ‘loves life like never before’, only despair remains.
Before that, in ‘Vissi d'arte’, Act 2, Tosca is singing about how she ‘lived for art’, did no harm to anyone, decorated altars – and she is asking the Lord why she is rewarded with such difficult fate.
The Croatian Radiotelevision Symphony Orchestra is one of the oldest European radio orchestras: it grew out of an orchestra founded in 1929 for Radio-Zagreb, just six years after the foundation of the first European radio orchestra. It has borne its current title since 1991. Initially, it was tied exclusively to the radio programme, however it began to hold public performances in 1942. Live broadcasts of concerts and recording remain a component part of its work.
The first public concert cycle with a live audience and radio broadcast was held at the Croatian Music Institute. Among the conductors of the time, the most common were Lovro pl. Matačić, Krešimir Baranović, Boris Papandopulo, Mladen Pozajić, Dragan Gürtl, and later Friedrich Zaun, Milan Sachs, Slavko Zlatić, Ferdinand Pomykalo... Of the post-war generation of conductors, those most tied to the work of the orchestra were Milan Horvat, Antonio Janigro, and Stjepan Šulek. In 1962, the position of chief conductor was introduced. The chief conductors were Pavle Dešpalj, Krešimir Šipuš, Josef Daniel, Oskar Danon, Milan Horvat, Uroš Lajovic, Vladimir Kranjčević, and Nikša Bareza. Enrico Dindo has held this position since the 2015/2016 season.
With a unique programme orientation, at the centre of which is the continuous performance and stimulation of works by Croatian authors as well as a repertoire of both standard and lesser-known works, the Croatian Radiotelevision Symphony Orchestra has become one of the key performing bodies in Croatia. Even during the Homeland War in the early 1990s, the orchestra held dozens of concerts in battlefields from Osijek, Pakrac, Lipik, Đakovo, Gospić, Vinkovci, and Bošnjaci to Šibenik, Zadar, Karlovac, and even Sarajevo. The orchestra regularly takes part in festivals and events such as the Zagreb Music Biennale, the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, Osor Music Evenings, Music Evenings at St. Donat’s Church, educational concerts for children and youth in cooperation with Croatian Musical Youth (HGM), competitions for young musicians... Concerts with years-long subscription cycles, the independent Majstorski ciklus and cycle Kanconijer in cooperation with Croatian Radiotelevision Choir, which hosts leading Croatian and international directors and soloists, are held at the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall and are broadcast live on Croatian Radio’s Third Programme and Croatian Television’s Third Programme. A large number of audio and video recordings are stored in the Croatian Radiotelevision archives, which are available via the HRTi multimedia platform.
Some of the many conductors and soloists with whom the orchestra has worked are Igor Markevitch, Franz Konwitschny, Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Ernst Bour, Krzysztof Penderecki, André Navarra, Leonid Kogan, Henryk Szeryng, Aldo Ciccolini, Ruža Pospiš-Baldani, Dunja Vejzović, Dubravka Tomšič-Srebotnjak, Rudolf Klepač, Ivo Pogorelić, Vladimir Krpan, Mstislav Rostropovich, Maxim Fedotov, Edita Gruberova, José Carreras, Ruggero Raimondi, Barbara Hendricks, Luciano Pavarotti… In the past few seasons, guest conductors have included Mladen Tarbuk, Aleksandar Marković, Valery Polyansky, André de Ridder, Ivan Repušić, Johannes Kalitzke, Pascal Rophé, Stanislav Kočanovski, Ivo Lipanović, and soloists have included Stephen Kovacevich, Pavao Mašić, Aleksandar Madžar, Radovan Vlatković, Martina Filjak, Aleksandar Buzlov, Ivana Bilić, Gordan Tudor, Javor Bračić, Håkan Hardenberger, Roman Simović, Andrea Lucchesini, Aljoša Jurinić, Leon Košavić, Goran Filipec, Monika Leskovar, Mischa Maisky…
The orchestra's discographic opus includes original albums by Croatian composers Stjepan Šulek, Milko Kelemen, and Miro Belamarić, a series of CDs dedicated to the orchestra’s chief conductors, and the CD Donizetti Heroines with Elena Moşuc, the Croatian Radiotelevision Choir and maestro Ivo Lipanović (Sony Classical, 2013). The five-disc album Stjepan Šulek (1914 – 1986): 8 Symphonies (HRT, Cantus, HDS, 2013) won a Porin discographic award. Pavle Dešpalj’s Concert for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra with soloist Gordan Tudor under the baton of maestro Pavle Dešpalj won a Porin in 2016 in the category of ‘best classical performance’. More recent releases have included a recording of Vatroslav Lisinski’s Ljubav i zloba, the first Croatian opera, including soloists, the HRT Choir, and maestro Mladen Tarbuk (HRT, 2017). To celebrate its 80th anniversary, a monography on the work of the orchestra was published alongside a double-album including recordings of chief conductors Milan Horvat, Krešimir Šipuš, Josef Daniel, Pavle Dešpalj, Vladimir Kranjčević, Oskar Danon, Uroš Lajovic and Nikša Bareza.
The Croatian Radiotelevision Symphony Orchestra won a Judita award at the 59th Split Summer (2013), and the Grand Prix Orlando at the 75th Dubrovnik Summer Festival.
Ivan Repušić, chief conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra, the first permanent guest conductor of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, is one of the most important and successful Croatian conductors of younger generation.
He started his professional career in German cultural institutions as the first Kapellmeister of the Lower Saxony State Opera in Hannover (2010–2013). He had his début performance in Deutsche Oper in Berlin with Puccini's La bohème (2011). Thereafter, he was named Kapellmeister of the renowned opera house (from the 2012/2013 season); since 2014, he has held the new role of the first permanent guest conductor. To date, he has led numerous successful opera performances, including Macbeth, Tosca, Turandot, La bohème, Eugene Onegin, Nabucco, Un ballo in mascera, La traviata, Carmen, The Magic Flute, Lucia di Lammermoor, Tannhäuser, La Gioconda, Falstaff, Don Carlos, Francesca da Rimini, The Flying Dutchman, etc. From 2016 until 2019, he served as the general music director of the Hannover State Opera. During his tenure, he conducted many opera premieres (Salome, The Damnation of Faust, The Flying Dutchman, Manon Lescaut, Aida, etc.) and symphonic concerts. Since assuming the role of chief conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra in 2017, he has conducted a number of concertante performances of operas (Luisa Miller, The Two Foscari, Attila, The Swallow, Ero the Joker, Ernani…) and orchestral music. He has recorded a number of albums in collaboration with eminent international soloists, the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Choir, which were released by leading European labels BR-Klassik, Warner Classics, and CPO.
He has conducted numerous renowned orchestras in Europe and around the world: the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin; the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra; the North German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in Hannover; the Vienna Symphony Orchestra; the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra of Milan; the Mannheim National Theatre Orchestra; the Prague Symphony Orchestra; the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra in Oslo; the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra; the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra; the Slovenian, Pannonian and Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestras, the Croatian Radiotelevision Symphony Orchestra, etc. He is a regular guest at European festivals and prestigious venues, such as the Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; Musikverein in Vienna; Konzerthaus in Berlin; Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden; Gasteig, Herkulessaal, and Prinzregententheater in Munich; Smetana Hall in Prague; Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Hall in Luzern; the Verdi Festival in Parma etc. He regularly performs in various renowned German opera houses, such as the Bavarian State Opera (Un ballo in mascera), Staatsoper in Berlin (Rigoletto, Tosca), Dresden Semperoper (The Magic Flute, La traviata, Simon Boccanegra, Macbeth, Tosca, Don Carlos, Madama Butterfly, Turandot), Hamburg State Opera (L’elisir d’amore, Rigoletto, La bohème, Tosca, Simon Boccanegra), the Leipzig Opera (Madama Butterfly, The Magic Flute), the Komische Oper Berlin (Rigoletto, La traviata), the Aalto Musiktheater in Essen (Falstaff), etc. He is also a welcome guest on prestigious stages outside Europe such as the New National Theater in Tokyo (La traviata).
Ivan Repušić studied conducting at the Academy of Music of the University of Zagreb under Igor Gjadrov and Vjekoslav Šutej. He continued developing his skills with renowned conductors, such as Jorma Panula, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Kazushi Ono, and Donald Runnicles. He started his professional career at the Croatian National Theatre in Split (2002) where he was chief conductor and director of the Opera (2006–2009). He conducted numerous performances of the Italian, French, Russian and Croatian operatic repertoire during that period (G. Verdi: Don Carlos, Aida, Simon Boccanegra, The Troubadour, Nabucco; G. Puccini: Sister Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, Manon Lescaut, La bohème; P. I. Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin; Ch. Gounod: Faust; G. Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor, The Elixir of Love; G. Rossini: Barber of Seville; R. Leoncavallo: I Pagliacci; J. Gotovac: Ero the Joker; J. Hatze: The Return, etc). He was active as director of music programmes at two renowned Croatian music festivals: Split Summer Festival (2006–2009) and Dubrovnik Summer Festival (2010–2012). He has been collaborating with the Zadar Chamber Orchestra as chief conductor since 2005. He also dedicated his time to teaching at the Arts Academy of the University of Split (2004–2016) where he gained the title of associate professor. He has received numerous Croatian awards for his artistic accomplishments, such as Vladimir Nazor Award, Vatroslav Lisinski Award, Milka Trnina Award, Orlando Award, the City of Zadar Award, etc. The Zadar University awarded an honorary doctorate to Maestro Repušić for his extraordinary contribution in the field of culture and art (2021).
From the 2024/2025 season, he takes over the position of chief conductor of the The Staatskapelle Weimar, and in the following season, the position of chief music director of the Leipzig Opera.
Sonya Yoncheva, the recipient of the 2021 Opus Klassik as Singer of the Year has become an acclaimed fixture on the most important stages of the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House, Teatro alla Scala, Opéra de Paris as well as the Bavarian, Berlin and Vienna State Operas. Her unforgettable portrayals of iconic roles have received tremendous acclaim from critics and audiences alike.
Sonya Yoncheva’s extensive repertoire includes jewels of the Baroque canon, as well as works by Bellini, Cherubini, Giordano, Puccini, Tchaikovsky, and Verdi. Celebrated for her distinctly beautiful voice and exceptional dramatic presence, Sonya is equally at home on the concert and recital stage, having performed solo concerts and recitals to critical acclaim in cities including Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Dresden, Hamburg, Madrid, Mexico City, Milan, Monte-Carlo, Moscow, Munich, New York, Paris, Santiago de Chile, Salzburg, Tokyo, and Vienna.
Career highlights on the opera stage include new productions of Tosca, Fedora, Don Carlos and Otello at the Metropolitan Opera, where she also performed the title roles of Norma, Luisa Miller, La traviata and Iolanta; Fedora and Il pirata (new productions), Andrea Chénier, La bohème (Mimì) and the 2020/21 season inauguration at Teatro alla Scala; the title part of Norma (new staging) and of La traviata at the Royal Opera House; of L'incoronazione di Poppea at the Salzburg Festival; new productions of Médée and La traviata at the Staatsoper Berlin; and of Don Carlos, La bohème and Iolanta at the Paris Opéra; Madama Butterfly and Tosca at the Wiener Staatsoper; Tosca and La traviata at the Bayerische Staatsoper and in Zurich, Manon Lescaut at the Hamburg State Opera, Norma at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Il pirata and Siberia at the Teatro Real Madrid as well as Tosca and La traviata at the Arena di Verona.
Sonya Yoncheva is an alumna of William Christie’s Le Jardin des Voix and has maintained a special focus the Early and Baroque repertory. Past engagements have featured her in several iconic roles, including Dido (Dido and Aeneas); Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare) and Poppea (L’incoronazione di Poppea).
Born in 1981, Sonya graduated with performance degrees in piano and voice in her hometown of Plovdiv, Bulgaria under the tutelage of Nelly Koitcheva. She later obtained her master’s degree in voice at the Conservatory of Geneva, studying with Danielle Borst. Ms. Yoncheva is also the winner of several renowned international competitions, including top prize and the special CultureArte prize at Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition (2010). She was honored as the Singer of the Year at the 2021 Opus Klassik Awards and the Newcomer of the Year (Singer) at the 2015 ECHO Klassik Awards. Sonya is the winner of the 2019 Readers’ Award of The International Opera Awards and was named the 2017 medici.tv Artist of the Year.
Sonya and her brother Marin Yonchev were lauded as the Singers of the Year in the 2000 edition of the competition “Hit-1,” produced by Bulgarian National Television. Ms. Yoncheva has collaborated with acclaimed popular artists including Sting and Elvis Costello, and she retains a keen interest in film music, which includes her past collaborations with famed composer Vladimir Cosma.
Sonya is featured on her Sony Classical solo albums Rebirth, Handel, The Verdi Album and Paris, mon amour. In 2020, Sonya became a producer, creating her company SY11 in order to organize her own concerts. Up to the present, the company has organized gala concerts in Bulgaria as well as a tour featuring Sonya Yoncheva’s Rebirth programme with stops in Geneva, Barcelona and Brussels. With SY11, Sonya has also cestablished “Inmost Voices”, a concert series inviting international opera stars to Sofia to appear in recital.
Sonya Yoncheva released her new solo album The Courtesan in February 2023 on her own label SY11 Productions. Her first book Fifteen Mirrors was also released by SY11 Productions in 2023.
In November 2021, Sonya Yoncheva became a UNICEF Ambassador in Bulgaria, standing up for children’s rights.
Blessed with a golden-age voice that routinely inspires comparisons to “legendary singers from earlier eras: Jussi Björling, Beniamino Gigli, even Enrico Caruso” (AP), Joseph Calleja is well-established as one of the most acclaimed and sought-after tenors today. His expansive discography and frequent appearances on the world’s leading opera and concert stages prompted NPR to hail him as “arguably today’s finest lyric tenor”.
The 2023/24 season brings a return to the US to sing Cavaradossi in Tosca for the Dallas Opera. In Berlin he sings an acclaimed signature role, Rodolfo in La bohème. At the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich he can be heard as Pollione in Norma under Gianluca Capuano. On the concert stage, the 2023/24, Calleja’s exciting projects include a concert at the Luis A. Ferré Performing Arts Center in San Juan alongside Ana María Martínez and Paulo Szot accompanied by the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. He gives a piano recital at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, California and performs in concert under the auspices of the Dallas Opera. At the end of the season, Calleja can be seen in two Puccini galas at the Hamer Hall in Melbourne.
Last season, Joseph Calleja saw performances as Cavaradossi in Tosca and Don José in Carmen at the Opéra National de Paris. He also enjoyed major touring success: he was heard in concert throughout Australia and New Zealand and toured Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. He performed with the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra at the Smetana Hall in Prague, with the Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in Poland, with the Würth Philharmonic Orchestra in Germany, and with l'Orchestra della Magna Grecia under Gianluca Marcianò in Italy.
Highlights from recent operatic seasons include the Duke in Rigoletto at the Paris Opera and at the Bavarian State Opera, Foresto in concert performances of Attila at the Royal Opera House London, Loris Ipanov in concert performances of Fedora at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the title characters in new productions of Faust and Les contes d’Hoffmann at the Metropolitan Opera; Alfredo in La traviata opposite Renée Fleming and Adorno in Simon Boccanegra alongside Plácido Domingo; new productions of La bohème, opposite Anna Netrebko; La traviata at the Lyric Opera of Chicago; and Maria Stuarda alongside Joyce DiDonato in concerts with the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He made his role debut as Riccardo in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera at the Royal Opera House in London and portrayed Ruggero in Rolando Villazón’s staging of Puccini’s La rondine at Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Calleja appears extensively in concert throughout the world. He was the featured soloist at the 2011 Nobel Prize Concert in Stockholm, was selected by the Maltese president to perform a private concert for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, and toured Germany with soprano Anna Netrebko. After co-headlining 2012’s Last Night of the BBC Proms, Calleja returned to the London festival in 2013 for a gala performance at the Royal Albert Hall and an open-air concert marking the Last Night of the Proms in Hyde Park. He stared in the renowned Open-Air Gala in front of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and sang at Moscow’s Zaryadye Concert Hall. Together with Diana Damrau, he performed a live concert at the Royal Palace of Caserta, Italy, as part of the Met Stars Live in Concert series. In 2022, invited as a special guest, the tenor performed alongside Anna Netrebko at the 175th Anniversary concert at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.
As an exclusive Decca Classics recording artist since 2003, the tenor boasts an extensive discography that includes complete operas and concert repertoire, as well as eight solo albums. His most recent, and first-ever sacred album, entitled “Ave Maria”, was released in 2023. His videography enjoys similar success, and it was his portrayal of Alfredo in the Royal Opera House’s DVD/Blu-ray release of La traviata, alongside Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson, which earned Calleja his first Grammy nomination. His rendition of the Verdi aria “La donna è mobile” is featured on the soundtrack of No Reservations, a 2007 motion picture starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart. He made his Hollywood debut in 2014’s The Immigrant, in which he portrays the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso in a cast with Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jeremy Renner.
Born in Malta in 1978, Joseph Calleja began singing at the age of 16, first in his church choir and then in formal training with Maltese tenor Paul Asciak. Calleja was only 19 when he made his operatic debut as Macduff in Verdi’s Macbeth at the Astra Theatre in Malta, shortly before winning an award in the Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition that launched his international career. He went on to win the 1998 Caruso Competition in Milan and was a prize winner in Plácido Domingo’s Operalia in 1999, the year of his U.S. debut at the Spoleto Festival. Since then, Calleja has gone on to appear with the world’s great opera companies.
One of his native land’s biggest celebrities, Calleja was selected to serve as Malta’s first cultural ambassador in 2012, and he was named a brand ambassador for Air Malta. In 2013 he teamed up with Malta’s Bank of Valletta to form the BOV Joseph Calleja Foundation, which serves children and families in need.
Bass Ante Jerkunica regularly appears at major opera houses and festivals, such as Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Staatsoper Vienna, the Salzburg Festival, Teatro Real Madrid, and Metropolitan Opera New York.
He started his career at the Croatian National Theatre in Split in 2002. He was engaged at Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he sang a variety of bass roles ranging from bel canto to Wagner, including Fiesco (Simon Boccanegra), Philippe II (Don Carlo), Padre Guardiano (La forza del destino), Banco (Macbeth), Alvise (La Gioconda), Rodolfo (La sonnambula), Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte), Marcel (Les Huguenots), Gremin (Eugene Onegin), Pimen (Boris Godunov), Fafner (Das Rheingold and Siegfried), Hunding (Die Walküre), King Marke (Tristan und Isolde), and Daland (Der fliegende Holländer). Parallel to his career in Berlin, his international career was on the rise, with guest appearances at prestigious opera houses in Frankfurt, Leipzig, Cologne, Hamburg and Zurich, Opera National de Paris, Opera Lyon, Bilbao Opera, Teatro San Carlo Lisbon, Staatsoper Vienna, Theater an der Wien, and operas in Amsterdam, Antwerp and Seattle.
He has regularly collaborated with Teatro de Liceu Barcelona, La Monnaie Brussels and Opera National du Rhin Strasbourg, where he interpreted a number of notable and critically acclaimed roles: Bluebeard (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle), Gurnemanz (Parsifal), Inquisitor (Don Carlo), Fafner and Fasolt (Das Rheinglod and Siegfried), Hunding (Die Walküre), Saltan (The Tale of Tsar Saltan), Sparafucile (Rigoletto), and Balthazar (La favorite). His role of Vodník in Rusalka at the renowned Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires earned him the Audience Award for best interpreter of the 2017/18 opera season. In 2017 he sang the role of Prince Ivan Khovansky in the opera Khovanschina in London’s Royal Albert Hall at the BBC Proms.
The COVID-19 pandemic briefly postponed a number of important appearances, including the Glyndebourne Festival in Great Britain, the Aix-en-Provence Festival and three productions at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; in the spring of 2022 he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Sparafucile in Rigoletto. He has frequently appeared in prestigious European concert halls, such as the Berliner Philharmonie, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Vienna, Konzerthaus Berlin, etc. He has also collaborated with renowned conductors including Riccardo Muti, Kirill Petrenko, Semyon Bychkov, Ivor Bolton, Marco Armiliato, Sir Mark Elder, Kent Nagano, Adam Fischer, Sir Donald Runnicles, Marc Albrecht, Michael Jurowsky, Alexander Vedernikov, Bertrand de Billy, Alain Altinoglu, etc. His successful collaborations include prominent opera directors, such as Robert Carsen, Calixto Bieito, Dmitri Tcherniakov, David Alden, Casper Holten, Àlex Ollé, Hans Neuenfels, and Romeo Castelluci.
His future projects include new musical and interpretative challenges in the productions of the Dresden Opera, the Vienna State Opera, and Teatro Real Madrid. He is especially looking forward to his next appearance at the Metropolitan Opera New York in the fall of 2024.
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Please note that the Opera Gala will be broadcast live by the Croatian Radio and Television.
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