Baritone Sergei Leiferkus is widely recognized as one of the most distinguished artists on the international opera scene. His remarkable ability to convey both nobility and villainy has made him renowned for roles such as Scarpia (Tosca), Iago (Otello), Rangoni (Boris Godunov), Telramund (Lohengrin), and Alberich (Der Ring des Nibelungen). He has appeared on the world’s most prestigious stages, including the Royal Opera House, Wiener Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Opéra Bastille, as well as at leading festivals such as Salzburg, Glyndebourne, and Edinburgh.

His extensive repertoire includes around 50 roles, among them Eugene Onegin, Nabucco, Macbeth, Simon Boccanegra, Don Giovanni, and Parsifal, with a special emphasis on Russian music from the 19th and 20th centuries. Recent additions to his repertoire include Berg’s Lulu, Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, and contemporary works by Peter Eötvös and Alexander Raskatov. In concert, he has performed with leading orchestras and conductors such as Abbado, Gergiev, Levine, Mehta, and Muti, and is particularly celebrated for Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13. He is currently Artistic Director of Cascais Opera – International Vocal Competition, alongside pianist Adriano Jordão.

Aleksandar Nikolić is one of the most active opera and theatre directors in Eastern Europe. He has been collaborating with Belgrade’s National Theater since 2009 and, since the 2018-19 season, also with the National Theater Novi Sad (Serbia’s first National Theatre), having been appointed Principal Opera Director there in 2023.
Mr. Nikolic studied Drama, Audiovisual Arts, Art History and Stage Design in Belgrade and served as assistant director to the 13th revival of Richard Eyre’s original 1994 production of Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’ at London’s Royal Opera House (2016).
From 2019 through 2023, he was general manager at Little Theater Duško Radović, in Belgrade, where he produced a total 22 works.
In Serbia and abroad, he moves with equal ease in opera, theatre and dance, and his work on the opera stage includes Aida, Faust and Rigoletto for the National Theatre Novi Sad, Orfeo ed Euridice, L’incoronazione di Poppea and La serva padrona at the National Theatre Belgrade, Tosca with the Belgrade Philharmonic, Don Giovanni and The Telephone for Sarajevo’s National Theatre, Don Giovanni at Universal Artists Festival (Boston), Pyramus and Thisbe and Die Fledermaus in Jerusalem and Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Vrnjačka Banja Summer Festival. Next June, he will be staging Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, the final event in Belgrade Philharmonic’s 100th Jubilee Season.

Few artists of her generation are as successful as Juliane Banse in so many areas of diverse repertoire. Her operatic repertoire ranges from Feldmarschallin, Figaro-Gräfin, Fiordiligi, Donna Elvira, Vitellia to Genoveva, Leonore, Tatjana, Arabella, Marschallin, Grete (Schreker’s Der ferne Klang) and Schneewittchen (in Heinz Holliger’s Schneewittchen). Born in southern Germany and raised in Zurich, the soprano first took lessons with Paul Steiner, later with Ruth Rohner at the Zurich Opera House, and then completed her studies with Brigitte Fassbaender and Daphne Evangelatos in Munich. Since the winter semester 2020/2021, she has been teaching as a professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and in the winter semester 2023 she has taken over the direction of the singing class at the Escuela Reina Sofia in Madrid. She also gives master classes in Austria and abroad and participates as a jury member in international competitions. The artist worked with numerous renowned conductors, including Lorin Maazel, Kent Nagano, Riccardo Chailly, Bernard Haitink, Franz Welser-Möst, Claudio Abbado and Manfred Honeck. Lieder recitals have always been her passion and have taken her to the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, Wigmore Hall in London, Konzerthaus Vienna, Kölner Philharmonie, Berlin’s Boulez Hall and Madrid, among others.

Jennifer Larmore is an American mezzo-soprano, a Grammy award winner with over 100 recordings to her name, Chevalier of the French government, Richard Tucker Award winner, Georgia Hall of Famer, voice teacher, author and actress in the new Netflix series King the Land.

She has a wide-ranging repertoire, having begun with coloratura roles from the Baroque and bel canto then adding music from the Romantic and Contemporary periods, sung at virtually every major opera house in the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Paris Opera, Tokyo, Berlin Deutsche Oper, and London Covent Garden, in collaboration with world renowned orchestras under the direction of Muti, Lopez-Cobos, Bernstein, Runnicles, Sinopoli, Masur, von Dochnanyi, Jacobs, Mackerras, Nelson, Spinosi, Abbado, Barenboim, Bonynge, Maazel, Osawa and Guidarini.

Miss Larmore, in collaboration with the double bass player Davide Vittone, created an ensemble called Jennifer Larmore and OpusFive. This is a string quintet offering programs that are entertaining and varied with Songs and Arias, Cabaret/Operetta and Movies and Broadway and have given concerts in Seville, Pamplona, Valencia, Las Palmas, Venice, Amiens, Olten, Aix en Provence, Dublin, and Paris. At the Magève.

Miss Larmore is widely known for teaching and giving masterclasses, having taught all over the world. She has recorded over widely for the Teldec, RCA, Harmonia Mundi, Deutsche Grammophon, Arabesque, Opera Rara, Bayer, Naive, Chandos, VAI and Cedille labels in over one hundred CDs to date as well as DVDs.

In addition to her many activities, travels, performances and causes, author Jennifer Larmore is working on books that will bring a wider public to the love of opera such as her book “Una Voce” that explores the world and psychology of the performer.

Miss Larmore lives in Paris with her husband, the bass player Davide Vittone and their little Opera dog Buffy.

Soprano Anna Samuil is among the most sought-after singers of her generation and has been steadily engaged as a soloist at the Staatsoper Berlin since 2004.
After her international debut as Violetta (Traviata) at Berlin State Opera in 2003, her career quickly brought her to important stages, like La Scala Milan, New York Met, Bavarian State Opera, Semperoper, Hamburg SO, Valencia, Lyon and Tokyo; and to renowned festivals, like Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, Edinburgh, Glyndebourne, Verbier, Arena di Verona and Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

Recordings documenting Anna Samuil’s artistic activities include ‘Eugene Onegin’ from the Salzburg Festival, ‘Don Giovanni’ from Glyndebourne, ‘Das Rheingold’ and ‘Götterdämmerung’ from La Scala, ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ from Berlin SO, Britten’s ‘War Requiem’, Beethoven’s ‘Ninth Symphony’ and her latest CD release, “Il mondo felice”, an homage to Maria Malibran with her violinist sister Tatiana.

Anna has collaborated with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Antonio Pappano, Plácido Domingo, Myung-whun Chung and Gustavo Dudamel, to name just a few. Directors who have guided her career include Franco Zeffirelli, Peter Stein, Jonathan Miller, Achim Freyer, Claus Guth, and Guy Cassiers. Since 2011 she is a Voice Professor at the Hanns Eisler Music University in Berlin.