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.

Born in Romania, Liliana Bizineche developed a passion for singing from an early age, inspired by her parents. At 17, she began studying with Valentina Cretoiu and graduated from the Cluj Faculty of Music in 1980, later perfecting her technique with Ileana Cotrubas, Regina Reznik, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Renée Jacobs. As a soloist at the Romanian National Opera in Cluj, she performed leading roles in operas by Mozart, Bellini, Bizet, Rossini, Puccini, Verdi and Mussorgsky. She gained international recognition, winning prizes in major competitions in Athens, Barcelona, Leipzig, Geneva, Rio de Janeiro, Munich, Budapest, ’s-Hertogenbosch and Paris, including the First Prize from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Alice Tully Prize.

Her international career began in 1981 at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon, performing Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther alongside Alfredo Kraus. She has appeared on major opera stages worldwide, collaborating with Shirley Verrett, Ileana Cotrubas, José Carreras, Ferruccio Furlanetto and others, under conductors such as Michel Corboz, Mstislav Rostropovich, Antonio Pappano, Kurt Masur and Yehudi Menuhin. She has recorded works by Beethoven, Honegger, Schumann, Perrin, Handel and Schubert, including Verdi’s Requiem live in Terezin. Currently, she teaches lyric singing at the University of Évora, guiding undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students, giving international masterclasses, and dedicating her research to vocal interpretation and singer training.

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.

The career of María Bayo is defined by technical excellence and interpretative versatility, qualities that have positioned her as the Spanish soprano with the greatest international projection of the last decades. Recognized, among other distinctions, with the Premio Nacional de Música in 2009 and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2023, her career stands out for a luminous vocal quality and a virtuosity that have enabled her to master more than 70 roles, ranging from the Baroque and Mozartian Classical repertoire to the Italian and French traditions as well as the zarzuela. Within her wide-ranging versatility, and beyond her Mozartian roles, highlights include characters such as Rosina, Mélisande and Ella (La Voix humaine). She is a regular presence at the great temples of opera worldwide, including Teatro alla Scala, Metropolitan Opera House, Palais Garnier and the Salzburg Festival, establishing herself as a chameleonic artist capable of bringing profound dramatic truth to each character.

Her discography is an impressive catalogue of more than thirty recordings, in which her interpretations of the music of composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gioachino Rossini and George Frideric Handel have received unanimous acclaim from critics. This artistic work is complemented by a strong commitment to the promotion of Spanish music, reviving and dignifying genres such as Baroque zarzuela and the art song repertoire. Recently, her legacy was honored with the Hitz Sariak, a distinction that celebrates her entrepreneurial spirit, her tireless dedication and her transformative influence in the cultural world.

Today, María Bayo combines her stage activity with a prolific pedagogical career, serving as vocal and musical advisor at the Centre de Perfeccionament Palau de Les Arts Reina Sofía, giving masterclasses at various prestigious institutions and acting as a jury member in some of the most demanding international singing competitions, including the Concours Musical International Reine Elisabeth de Belgique and the Concurso de Canto de Bilbao-Bizkaia Pedro Mª Unanue.