SONYA YONCHEVA
Turku Music Festival
has successfully continued luring world class opera singers to perform in Turku
and this year it was Sonya Yoncheva’s (Bulgarian soprano) turn. She came to
perform to Turku Concert Hall directly from the Salzburg Festival and her
suitcase was lost on the way, so the first thing in Finland, she had to
purchase new gowns for the concert.
Despite these small
obstacles, Sonya Yoncheva was in excellent form. She has earlier sung a lot of
Händel and critics have called her the best Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata
since Maria Callas, but in Turku she concentrated on arias by Jules Massenet
and Giacomo Puccini. She sang really well also this type of music. Yoncheva has
a strong, huge voice that can without difficulties reach even the highest
notes. When she also has a wonderful ability to put her soul into the songs,
the audience was ecstatic. My favourite out of all the arias she sung was
“Pleurez! pleurez, mes yeux” from Jules Massenet’s opera Le Cid. That aria
really made you swallow tears. What a fantastic performance!
Yoncheva’s accompanist
was the pianist Antoine Palloc, whose cooperation with the singer was
phenomenal. You could really see the experience they had in performing
together. Palloc also played beautifully some solo pieces in their simplicity.
The applause of the audience
after the concert was so enthusiastic that Yoncheva sang no less than three
additional pieces. The first one was “Ô Paris, gai séjour” from Charles Lecocq’s
operetta Les Cent Vierges. In the introduction of the second piece Yoncheva
refused to say the name of the aria “because everybody knows it”. And so we
did, since it was O mio babbino caro from Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi. And
the third piece Yoncheva introduced as a perfect song from Edit Piaf to say
good night to everybody and the song turned out to be “La vie en rose”. As a
whole the concert was a magnificent experience and truly worth a trip to Turku!
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