Get a real job, they said. So I did. I became a professional opera singer. I am lucky to live the life of a full-time artist, thanks to my family and to my life circumstances.
I first heard a real opera singer when I was in the Conservatory Choir in Vienna. It was a choir for girls only and I, at only 10 years of age, was one of its youngest members. Most of the girls were around 16 years old and had already highly developed voices. There was one singer who stood out though. She was older and in one of our concerts at the Konzerthaus in Vienna, her voice carried across the choirs and the orchestra, across the stage and into the auditorium and I was fascinated. This love of operatic singing intensified after I saw the movie ‘Amadeus’ for the first time when I was 13 years old. I must have seen that movie at least 50 times. Since we lived in Vienna at the time, I watched it in its dubbed German version which fit the story perfectly. Of course I emulated all of the soprano arias. Sadly, I was told at the music school where I studied piano and theory that I was too young to take solo vocal lessions. My heart was crushed and it wasn’t until I was already at Carleton University studying classical piano that I rediscovered my love of singing. At age 21 I found a voice teacher and entered the Kiwanis Music Festival as a singer for the first time and won a class. I was absolutely astonished. I had only been singing for a couple of months. Eventually I took singing more seriously and started taking lessons with Yoriko Tanno who introduced me to Stuart Hamilton with whom I continued to take coaching sessions once a month in Toronto. Since my love for singing was that much greater than my love for piano playing, I decided to focus on singing only after I graduated from Carleton University with a Bachelor of Music in piano performance, under the tutelage of Verna Jacobson.
I attended various master classes – including the Daniel Ferro masterclasses in Italy, and then later on with pianist Stephen Delaney in Austria and renowned singer Dunja Vejzović in Slovenia, studying also with Prof. Pia Brodnik in Ljubljana.
After auditioning in various places around Europe, I finally managed to land my first operatic role in 2009 with the Ljubljana Opera House as Madame Herz in Mozart’s The Impresario. It seemed like fate that my professional debut would be a Mozart role. Since this was temporary work, after successfully passing an audition for the Maribor Opera House chorus, that same year I decided to move to Maribor and work full-time as a chorister. Since I never went to actual opera school, I figured, this was a good way to be part of the operatic world. As a chorus singer I got to learn the process and the repertoire under less pressure, work with various stage directors and conductors, and at the same time hear from wonderful soloists from around the globe up close.
I quickly had the opportunity to sing smaller roles and over the years I was given bigger and bigger responsibilities which eventually led to my becoming a full time soloist with Opera Maribor in 2015.
Here are a few of my personal favourite and significant roles:
Ophelia (Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas)is by far my most treasured role. I was lucky to work on this role with Stuart Hamilton all those years ago and his lessons stuck with me all the way to 2025 when I sang her for the first time. This was a production with renowned stage director Frank van Laecke and the wonderful and 2026 winner of the La Maestra competition in France Maestra Mojca Lavrenčič.
Here are some excerpts from my arias from various vantage points:
Here is a critique in German: OnelineMerker, die internationale Kulturplattform
Gilda (Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi) is a role I honestly never thought I would sing simply because I never dared to wish that far. But as luck would have I had the opportunity to sing with conductor Francesco Rosa and work in a production by Pier Francesco Maestrini. I was also lucky to sing with two wonderfully talented baritones as Rigoletto Daniel DeVicente and Marian Pop.
Some excerpts:
Parla siam soli with Marian Pop
Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss) is a role that has been following me ever since I started singing. Yoriko Tanno produces an annual production for her best students called Shooting Stars. Here she hires a stage director and a musical director who is also the pianist for the production. Her students learn the process of putting on a staged opera or excerpts thereof and it was in one of these productions that I sang the role of Rosalinde for the first time. In English, mind you. Then, as a chorister in Maribor, my first production with that house was Die Fledermaus, this time in Slovenian! Sure, why not. Years later, in 2019 I debuted as Rosalinde, a role which grow on me each time I return to study her and a role I hope to one day sing in its original language, German. One can hope, right? I will sing her once more in Maribor Opera’s 2026/2027 season.
Musetta (La Boheme by Giacomo Puccini) is a generally well-known role, mostly because the opera itself is probably in the top 5 of staged productions per season worldwide which doesn’t make the opera any easier. Musetta is a role that can liven up the romantic and tragic aspect of the opera. Her famous aria ‘Quando men vo’ is short but challenging on multiple levels. I am happy to be able to sing her again in Maribor Opera’s 2026/2027 season.
The solo soprano part in Carmina Burana by Carl Orff is no pieace of cake but it was always a dream of mine to sing it. I was lucky to sing it in Maribor in 2026 under the baton of Maestro Simon Krečič and with the choreographed performance by Edward Clug.
While not an operatic role Eliza Doolittle (My Fair Lady by Lerner/Loewe) is a role that landed me a permanent contract as a soloist in Maribor. I would never call myself a musical singer, much less a particularly skilled dancer. Musicals were never on my to-do list, I never really listened to them or sang very much from them. However, I do have tremendous respect for musical theatre artists and can say that, after having performed Eliza multiple times, this role is no easy feat. The combination of singing, acting, dancing and talking in various accents, not to mention remembering all the lines, is highly demanding but equally rewarding. I cherish this role dearly because of all that but also because I got to work with stage director Paul-Emile Fourny, conductor Maestro Simon Robinson, and the renowned Slovenian actor Vlado Novak as Alfred Doolittle.
Frasquita (Carmen by Georges Bizet) is not necessarily the biggest role in the repertoire, it is a role that has helped me tremendously as a singer and performer. I had learned it for another opera company but didn’t get the part that time. After having sung Carmen as a chorister, our production was going to go on a tour of Japan in 2014, and I was asked to sing Frasquita on that tour. The tour was spanned over the better part of a month with 24 performances across Japan. To me it was grandiose and spectacular. I have sung this role again several times in another more recent production. I had the honour of singing with several Carmens over my career. These are Ramona Zaharia, Guadalupe Barrientos, Olga Volkova and Vesselina Kasarova.
Mowgli from the recently composed children’s opera The Jungle Book by Giovanni Sollima is an absolute gem of a role. The opera was created by Sollima, Pier Francesco Maestrini, who is also wrote the libretto and directed its premiere production, and animator Joshua Held. It is an exciting piece of music, incredibly physically and vocally challenging and I am absolutely delighted that I was a part of it Slovenian version in Maribor.
Other roles that I have done as a soloist include Norina in Don Pasquale, Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, Lisette in La Rondine, Lisa in La Sonnambula (you can listen to a live version here), Katharine McMahon Johnson in the newly written opera-musical Tesla by Slovenian composer Slavko Avsenik mlajši, Aksinya in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Katja Silvana in the Slovenian operetta Planinska roža (The mountain flower), Flora in La Traviata, Wellgunde in Das Rheingold, Berta in The Barber of Seville, Amor in L’incoronazione di Poppea, Nella in Gianni Schicchi, Suor Genovieffa in Suor Angelica, Giannetta in L’Elisir d’amore, 1st Lady in The Magic Flute, High Priestess in Aida, Princess in Puss in boots, Leonora in Marij Kogoj’s Črne maske (Black masks) among others.
I have has also been a part of two world premieres of Slovenian children’s operas: As the Beast in Kdor upa, ne odneha (Hope never dies) by Vitja Avsec and as the Princess in Granatno jabolko (The Pomegranate) by Tomaž Svete.
I have been lucky to have performed roles under the baton of various conductors including Marko Letonja, Francesco Rosa, Loris Voltolini, Simon Robinson, Simon Krečič, Ivan Hut, Mojca Lavrenčič, Valentina Egel, Dan Kalousek, Egon Mihajlovič, Tara Simoncic, Benjamin Pionnier, Stefano Romani, Uroš Lajovic, Marko Hribernik, Simon Dvoršak, Igor Švara, and Aleksandar Spasić. I have shared the concert stage with artists such as Saša Olenjuk, Sabina Cvilak, Milena Morača, Guadalupe Barrientos, Oksana Volkova, Vesselina Kasarova, Martin Sušnik, Klemen Slakonja, Janez Lotrič, Petya Ivanova, Jure Ivanušič, Lucienne Lončina, Janez Dovč, Tomaž Kozlevčar, Marko Zaletelj, the vocal group ‘Katice’, Evelyn Greenberg, Frederic Lacroix, Prof. Deirdre Piper, Yannick-Muriel Noah and others. I have had the pleasure to work with various stage directors including Frank van Laecke, Pier Francesco Maestrini, Paul-Emile Fourny, Stanislav Moša, Krešimir Dolenčič, Massimo Pizzi Gasparon Contarini, Dora Ruždjak-Podolski, Dieter Kaegi, Filippo Tonon, Bruno Berger-Gorski, Igor Pison, Dr. Henrik Neubauer, Janez Burger, Guillermo Silva-Marin, and Stephanie Bogle.
I have sung in many outdoor concerts including the biggest one which attracts thousands of listeners every year, the Opera in the Park concert in Maribor, as well as many others across Slovenia as well as Italy and Croatia.
You can listen to some excerpts here:
In 2012 I co-founded the group Movazs with fellow singer Mojca Potrč. The group consists of cellist Zsofi Klascman, pianist Simon Robinson and ballet dancers Evgenija Koškina and Sytze Jan Luske. We have performed at the Lent Festival in Maribor.
With Yoriko Tanno’s Shooting Stars I performed in four productions from 2005-2007 as La Badessa in Suor Angelica directed by Stephanie Bogle, as the Evil Queen in Frederic Lacroix’ world premiere Snow White, as Madame Herz in Der Schauspieldirektor and as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, all three directed by Guillermo Silva-Marin.