Prof. Nikolay Borchev - Vocal

Der Bariton Nikolay Borchev ist seit Oktober 2023 Professor für Gesang an der HMT Leipzig.

Er kam als sehr junger Sänger für einige Jahre ins Ensemble der Bayerischen Staatsoper, bevor er für zwei Spielzeiten fest an die Wiener Staatsoper wechselte und danach freischaffend tätig wurde.

Während seiner Zeit im Festengagement hat er sich schnell ein großes und vielfältiges Repertoire erarbeitet, das vom Barock bis zur zeitgenössischen Musik reicht.
Nikolay Borchev ist regelmäßiger Gast u.a. am Royal Opera House Covent Garden, am Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brüssel, in der Carnegie Hall New York, an der Opéra Comique Paris, der Staatsoper Hamburg, der Oper Köln, der Staatsoper und der Deutschen Oper Berlin, der Oper Frankfurt, der Semperoper Dresden, dem Theater Basel, am Theater an der Wien, beim Glyndebourne Festival, am Theater St. Gallen, an der Opéra du Rhin Strasbourg, am Teatro Real Madrid und immer wieder an seinem alten Stammhaus, der Bayerischen Staatsoper München. Hier in Leipzig war Nikolay Borchev bereits in zwei Produktionen zu erleben: als Marcello in „La boheme“ von G. Puccini und als Morald in „Die Feen“ von R. Wagner.

Er ist zudem gern gesehener Gast bei renommierten Festspielen, wie den Salzburger-Pfingstfestspielen, dem Rheingau Musik Festival, den Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festspielen, den Schwetzinger SWR Festspielen, der Ruhrtriennale, den Festspielen Baden-Baden und beim Music@Menlo Festival in Atherton, Californien.

Seine pädagogische Laufbahn hat Nikolay Borchev als Dozent an der HMT Rostock begonnen und lehrte anschließend als Professor für Gesang an der HfM in Nürnberg.
Nikolay Borchev wurde in Pinsk/Weißrussland geboren und erhielt seine musikalische Ausbildung ab dem 7. Lebensjahr in den Fächern Klavier, Flöte und Orgel in Moskau. Ab dem 16. Lebensjahr studierte er Gesang am Moskauer Tschaikowsky-Konservatorium bei Pavel Lisitsian und Maria Ariya und setzte danach sein Studium an der Hochschule für Musik „Hanns Eisler“ in Berlin bei Heinz Reeh, Julia Varady und Wolfram Rieger fort.

www.borchev.com

Prof. Elvira Dreßen - Vocal

KS Prof. Roland Schubert - Vocal

The bassist Roland Schubert comes from Gentha near the Luther town of Wittenberg.

At young age Schubert was already educated in playing the flute and the piano. Having this previous knowledge he attended the music school "Johann Sebastian Bach" in Leipzig from 19779-1983 where he also got his first singing lessons. After the Abitur  (school leaving exam) he studied singing in the master class of Professor Hermann Christian Polster at the music college "Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy" in Leipzig from 1983-1989. There he also worked as an assistant. Since 1993 he got lessons from Professor Walther Berry in Vienna.  After his successful final examinations he was engaged at the opera house in Leipzig were he succeeded with roles like Leporello, Papageno, Rocco, Bartolo and celebrated different premières successfully.

Since 1991 Schubert has also been bound by a second contract to the Vienna State Opera House. Since the theatre season 2000/2001 he has had an engagement at the German State Opera in Berlin.

Guest performances led the artist to the Semper Opera in Dresden, the State Opera in Hamburg, the Opera in Halle, the State Opera in Munich, the Opera in Rouen, the Folk Opera in Vienna, the Milan Scale, the Berlin State Opera, the Opera in Chemnitz and the Opera in Seoul.

Apart from his career as a a singer of opera  Roland Schubert also has a good reputation as a concert singer. Among the orchestras which asked him for cooperation are  the Vienna Philharmonics, the Gewandhuas Orchestra Leipzig, the MDR Symphony Orchestra, the Bach Orchestra Leipzig, the Saxon State Band, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra Munich and the Orchestra dell'Accademia Santa Cecilia Rom. He worked with conductors like Carlo Maria Giulini ,Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, Horst Stein, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislaw Rostropowitsch, Fabio Luisi, Christian Thielemann, Michel Plasson und Kent Nagano.

In 2001 he was conferred the honorary title of a Chamber Singer.

Roland Schubert took part in different radio and TV recording. So he sang the roles of Masetto, Bartolo and Don Alfonso in the Mozart – da Ponte series which was produced by the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk.

Numerous CD recordings with him were published within the last years. Roland Schubert has already sung more than 100 parts and worked together with many important directors, among others Ruth Berghaus, Christine  Mielitz, Alfred Kirchner, David Pountney, Volker Schlöndorf, Christoph Loy  and many more.

In the year 2004 he was appointed full Professor for singing at the College of Music and Theater in Leipzig.

He gave different master courses in Germany, Switzerland and in Italy. Students of his singing classes are prize winners of international competitions and were engaged to different theaters, among others German Opera Berlin, State Opera Berlin, State Opera Vienna, Opera Leipzig, MDR Radio Choir, Theater Bremen, Gera/Altenburg, Luzern, Semper Opera Dresden.

Prof. Yamina Maamar - Vocal

Yamina Maamar was born in Germany and studied singing with Prof. Carol Richardson at the Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media. She started her career as a mezzosoprano with roles such as Cherubino, Dorabella and Orlofsky before she changed to the dramatic soprano repertoire. In addition to her international artistic activities, she sang in important German opera houses such as the Bavarian State Opera Munich, the Lower Saxony State Opera Hannover, the Aalto Theater Essen, the opera houses in Dortmund, Braunschweig, Kaiserslautern, Linz, Gelsenkirchen, Bern, Darmstadt and others.

She made her US debut in 2007 at the Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center,  New York City, as „Grete“ in Franz Schreker’s opera „The Distant Sound“.
In recent years she took on many key roles such as Isolde, Salome, the Empress (The Woman Without a Shadow by Richard Strauss), Lady Macbeth (Shostakovich and Verdi), Aida, Abigaille (Nabucco), Elisabetta (Don Carlo), Manon Lescaut, Adriana Lecouvreur, Marschallin (Rosenkavalier), Kundry (Parsifal), Senta (The Flying Dutchman) and Fidelio Leonore.
In 2019 she will appear as „Brünnhilde“ in the complete „Ring des Nibelungen“ (R. Wagner) in Passau, in Verdi's „Messa da Requiem“ in Cologne and Bonn as well as in the German Premiere of Anno Schreier’s „City of the Blind“ at Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern.

Important stations in the concert area were the International Edinburgh Festival (Berlioz: Les nuits d’été, Wagner: Wesendonck-Lieder, de Falla: El amor brujo), the Seoul Arts Center (Beethoven, 9th Symphony), Herkulessaal Munich (excerpts Tristan and Isolde), Verdi's „Messa da Requiem“ with Enoch zu Guttenberg, concerts with WDR Cologne (e.g. excerpts Tannhäuser), a recital in the Apollosaal State Opera Berlin and „Tove“ in Schoenberg’s „Gurrelieder“ in the Berlin Cathedral.

Yamina Maamar is co-founder and artistic director of the International Opera Academy IOA e.V. which organizes annual masterclasses for singers and concerts since 2012. After a few years of teaching at Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media she has been appointed as a professor for classical voice at the Dresden University of Music Carl Maria von Weber in 2019.
She is also a welcome guest at numerous masterclasses at home and abroad, e.g. in China, Tunisia, France, at the Opera Academy Schloss Henfenfeld or the Sankt Goar International Music Festival and Academy.

Prof. Gotthold Schwarz – Master class oratorio

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Prof. Brigitte Wohlfarth – Vocal

Brigitte Wohlfarth began her vocal studies in Würzburg, Germany, where she recieved scholarships from both the „Richard Wagner-Verband“ and the „Leni- Geissler-Stiftung“. Further studies with James King in Munich (National Theater) greatly influenced her singing artistry.
Her career began as sought-after oratoria and recital singer:
Rheingaufestival, Weilburger Schloßkonzerte, Internalional Musiktage Bad Urach, Mozartfest Würzburg, Festival der Mitte Europa and the „Bregenzer Festspiele“ are only a few of her many concert stations. Milano, Rome, Bolzano, Trieste, Munich, Berlin, Nürnberg, Leipzig, Bern, Biel, Ankara, London, Singapore (New Esplanade Hall) Salzburg as well as in Australia, France, Norway and Finland and China.
Mrs. Wohlfarth can be heard on numerous CD and Radio productions, among the most important are: Faust (Louis Spohr), Die Vögel (Braunfels – nominated for 40 Grammy awards), 9.Symphony (L.V. Beethoven) and Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank (G. Fried). It is with the world premiere of the latter that Mrs. Wohlfarth launched her opera career in Nürnberg Germany in 1993. In the same year, following an appearance as finalist in the international „Neue Stimmen“ competition (Bertelsmann), she debuted as „Desdemona“ (Otello/Rossini) at Staatstheater Braunschweig, where she remained until 1997.

Since then she has guested in numerous theatres:
Bologna (the opening of the ARENA DEL SOLE), Castello di Montegridolfo, Naples (Teatro San Carlo), Udine (the opening of the Nuovo Teatro), Palermo (Teatro Massimo), Festspiele Erl, Tbilisi (National Opera House), Beijing, Shanghai (Grand Theatre), Heidenheim (Opernfestpiele), Halle a.d. S., Lübeck, Trier, Frankfurt a.M., Berlin, Stuttgart, Munich ( first night “ Leonore – L.v. Beethoven ), Rome, London and Meiningen, where she enjoyed enormous success from audiences and critics alike as Sieglinde (Die Walküre) and Gutrune (Götterdämmerung) in the „RING“-staging from Christine Mielitz. Her many-sided repertoire ranges from Mozart`s Fiordiligi and First Lady to Puccini`s Turandot, Verdi`s Aida and Leonore (Trovatore), to Wagner`s Elisabeth (Tannhäuser), Elsa (Lohengrin), Brünnhilde (Götterdämmerung) and Isolde (Tristan und Isolde), Weber`s Agathe (Freischütz), Beethoven`s Fidelio-Leonore and Richard Strauss` Arabella, Salome, Ariadne, Diemut (Feuersnot) and Elektra. Brigitte Wohlfarth worked from September 2010 until August 2015 as a professor for classical voice at the Hochschule der Künste (HKB) in Bern (Switzerland). Since September 2015 she was appointed as a professor for classical voice at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Hochschule für Musik und Theater to Leipzig. Since 2017, she has also been an accredited professor at Kalaidos University of Switzerland.

Prof. Heiko Reintzsch – Repetition and ensemble

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Emanuel Winter – Coaching

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Sung Ah Park – Coaching

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Vita Gajevska – Coaching

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Maya Akutso – Coaching

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Madoka Ito – Coaching

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Prof. Ulrich Pakusch – Coaching

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Bo Price – Coaching

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Mark Johnston – Coaching

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Bo Skovhus
Masterclass 2021


© Roland Unger


The International Saxon Singers' Academy in Torgau is a wonderful thing! Not only are the city, the surroundings and the organization first class, but also the atmosphere and the level of the participants is absolutely top notch. I am very happy that I had the opportunity to do a masterclass there. I would be happy to come back anytime!

 



© Internationale Sängerakademie Torgau