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Sonya Yoncheva partners with conductor Francesco Ivan Ciampa and the Orchestra dell’Opera Carlo Felice Genova for a new album titled ĪCŌN, the Latin word for “portrait.”
In a world where AI is becoming an increasingly tangible part of our daily lives and of the creative industries, Sonya has chosen a repertoire featuring some of the greatest bel canto masterpieces by Bellini and Donizetti to show that the authenticity of the score, the voice, and the performance will always remain inherently human.

Yoncheva invites us to look into our own image at the crossroads between the past and the future. Her message is that opera – and bel canto in particular – belongs neither solely to the era of early Romanticism nor to that of the late technological revolution. Rather, it is eternal, beyond time and space – just like the universal human emotions of love, sorrow, loss, longing, anxiety, and hope that it reflects and that have always accompanied humanity, including in times of profound social upheaval such as those we witness today.

For this new project, the Bulgarian soprano has chosen an innovative approach: each aria will first appear exclusively on Sonya Yoncheva’s YouTube channel as a video single, addressing significant themes of our time, reimagined through the legacy of the bel canto composers. These will form a series of episodes within a broader public conversation about our contemporary world, inspired by classical music. Each of the videos will be created with the assistance of artificial intelligence – though behind it stands a team of professionals – thus opening a space for dialogue between new technologies and art in a mode of coexistence rather than competition.

The first single is expected to be released next week. Follow here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheShlupy/videos

[Photo album cover: Michael Pöhn / Wiener Staatsoper]