Press

On April 29, Sonya Yoncheva presented her first Zarzuela concert at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, “a triumph” (Codalario) which brought “the theater down” (La Razón) and caused the press to hail her “attention to details, vocal subtlety” and “perfect Spanish” (Platea Magazine). According to Opera Áctual, “Yoncheva has it all”, while Online Opera simply stated that “Sonya Yoncheva has indeed proven that she is made for Zarzuela”. Please find the complete press review of the concert here below: 

“It is obvious that Sonya Yoncheva loves Madrid and vice versa. The relationship began at the Teatro Real in 2009, in the days of Antonio Moral. The “Opera Estudio” project presented a pedagogical “Don Pasquale” to bring children closer to music and in that performance an unknown young woman named Yoncheva stood out and the following year would win Operalia. She returned to Real, pregnant, for an expendable recital and for a wonderful Imogene of “Il Pirata” by Bellini in 2019. 
She now visits Valencia, Bilbao and Madrid. In the first two she is accompanied by piano with a varied repertoire, while the repertoire of the third concert is something very special. It has a lot of merit, both in the intention and in the result, that a Bulgarian dedicates an entire program with orchestra to zarzuela. There are reasons that explain it in part such as that she, apparently, has Spanish ancestors and that her husband is the conductor Domingo Hindoyan, with whom she has been preparing these performances in the Dominican Republic. She recently participated in a concert at the Met and in the peculiar opening of La Scala this year. “Tosca”, “Rusalka” and “Il trovatore” were cancelled on her due to the pandemia, but she from Bilbao will go to Paris for another concert. 
She should be given a lot for credit for singing «El pájaro azul», «El juramento», «El niño judío», «Las hijas del Zebedeo», «Cecilia Valdes» y el dúo de «El Gato Montés» together with an impeccable Alejandro del Cerro. She was very applauded from the beginning, but it was especially in these last three that she brought the theater down. Charm, very acceptable diction, a beautiful lyrical soprano voice in its fullness and enough grace for this risky repertoire were her weapons. (…) She displayed low and high notes, and a full-bodied middle register center, which she knows how to accompany with a vibrato that conveys feeling. Miquel Ortega, composer and teacher who loves the genre and transmits it, accompanied her with the Orchestra of the Community of Madrid, luckily already with a full staff. They repeated “La Marchenera” and Ortega moved to the piano to accompany her on a marvelous “Habanera” from Bizet’s “Carmen”. “It’s not easy for me to sing these beautiful zarzuela melodies,” she explained to us and said goodbye with ” «Hasta pronto». ¡Qué así sea».” 
Gonzalo Alonzo, La Razón 
 
“Yoncheva has it all: brilliant high notes, a luminous middle register, exquisite and endless filatos, and even smooth descents into the lower register.” 
You don’t always have the opportunity to listen to one of the great stars of international opera singing zarzuela. This is what happened in Madrid, with a radiant Sonya Yoncheva, as always, with talent, beauty and charm, and who returned to the Spanish stages to close a gap in a repertoire which was new for her. The debut was spectacular. To begin with, Yoncheva has that extrovert vitality that is essential to sing Spanish music well. Not because she overacted, or made grand gestures, or tried to dance (she did, and with good judgment, in a wonderful version of “Yo soy Cecilia Valdés!”, by Cuban Gonzalo Roig), but because Zarzuela, and Hispanic music in general, is worthless if it cannot be interpreted as something alive, which manifests itself as such, unique and unrepeatable, on stage. Understanding that and achieving it is much more difficult than it seems.  
Then comes the vocal technique required by a repertoire that the soprano herself confessed out loud and in dialogue with the audience, that ” is not easy. ” It is not, indeed, due to the technical demands, very marked, for example, in the astonishing prison song of ‘Las hijas de Zebedeo’, which combine bel canto and popular evocation with an astonishing naturalness, nor in the famous ‘De España vengo’, which requires moving from an explosive register to an internalized one with hardly any transition. Not in the melancholic flamenco song of ‘La Marchenera’ or in the wonderful romanza ‘Yo me en el mundo desamparada’, by Gaztambide, with its elegant and sustained line du chant.  
Nor is it easy for a voice as big as Yoncheva’s to adapt to the mischief and misunderstandings of the ‘El gato montés’ duet, in which she had the excellent collaboration of an Alejandro del Cerro in a state of vocal and interpretative grace. Yoncheva has it all: luminous top, shiny middle register, luscious and endless filatos, and even smooth descents to the lower register, giving her astonishing expressive versatility. Finally, in addition to the musical and technical profusion, there is the purely artistic one. The recital was, at heart, a very beautiful series of female portraits: beginning with the introverted laments ‘El pájaro azul’ and ‘El anillo de hierro’, to the cheerfulness of requited love in ‘¡Vaya una tarde bonita!’ and the radiant pride of ‘¡De España vengo!’.  
All that remains is for Yoncheva to sing a complete Zarzuela and interpret Mari Pepa, Paloma or la Menegilda. Then – without exaggerating – she will once again rediscover the great titles of the repertoire that she sings and performs so magnificently. She was accompanied, with a stellar performance, by the Orchestra of the Teatro de La Zarzuela, which performed some very beautiful and little-known pages (the prelude to ‘Los Borrachos’ by Gerónimo Giménez), under the attentive, very fine and expressive direction of Miquel Ortega . As an encore, an overwhelming Habanera by Carmen by Bizet in perfect French, accompanied by Ortega at the piano.” 
José Maria Marco, Opera Áctual  

“Yoncheva’s voice was clean, clear, with a brilliant timbre from the start,(…) An enviable technical display of an intelligent artist, who gave a lot of attention to details, vocal subtlety, with somewhat steely high notes and dreamy pianissimi. Speaking perfect Spanish, the diction of the soprano was always convincing, even more than that of other artists born in this land of ours. Attentive, chiseled phrasing, heartfelt expressiveness supported by an ever-present score. Thus, in the first part of the night, which was a pilgrimage among lamentations, she was especially captivating in ‘Tres horas antes del día’, which she ended up repeating as an encore to the applause of the audience, as well as in ‘Lágrimas mías en dónde estáis’ and ‘Yo me vi en el mundo desamparada’. Given the duality of the registers in the zarzuela, these last two pieces have been recorded and “popularized” by lower voices such as those of Teresa Berganza and Conchita Supervía. On this occasion, Yoncheva’s bright upper third was joined by her ability to navigate the lower third in a comfortable, natural way. 
For Penella’s ‘El gato montés’, the soprano had a very valuable partner, tenor Alejandro del Cerro, who displayed a powerful voice just as the role requires, (…)  Shiny timbre, large voice, complete character in a few minutes. For reasons that are not relevant, this is a work with which, beyond the musical ones, I do not connect at all and, having listened to this duo on numerous occasions, it is without a doubt the time I have enjoyed it the most. And without bullfights or shawls, though other may differ, but I am grateful. Yoncheva still had her own particular apotheosis and, with it, that of the public. The singer, very skillful, left for the end a crescendo of well-known and gratifying pages, starting with a heartfelt ‘No corté más que una rosa’ and passing through ‘De España vengo’, tasted to the extreme, recreated in slow times, in the pianissimi, in the playing in thirty-second notes… and in the vigorous ovation of the public. 
To top it off, the best-known and international ‘Carceleras de Chapí’ and the Cuban ‘Cecilia Valdés’, a wonderful zarzuela we were recently able to enjoy, fully and on stage, in this same theater. In both, Yocheva began to fly with natural grace in speaking, in not speaking, in singing, which the zarzuela so much requires. Such was the applause from the audience that she ended the night with Carmen’s Habanera, accompanied by Miquel Ortega on piano. A piano … that had been on stage from the first moment, but which I had not noticed until it began to sound … such was the magnetism of Sonya Yoncheva.” 
Gonzalo Lahoz, Platea Magazine 

“Sonya Yoncheva’s astonishing success at the Teatro de la Zarzuela” 
“Sonya Yoncheva’s apotheosis at the Teatro de la Zarzuela 
The trajectory of the great artists, of the divos in the best sense of the word, is marked by challenges, risks, big bets … and such are without a doubt coming to sing Zarzuela in Madrid, at the theater that bears the name of the genre, dealing with a totally new repertoire for the singer in question and with a succulent program – nine romances and a duet, as well as two encores – far from “fulfilling the task.” The challenge faced by the Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva, after her triumph at the Teatro Real a year and a half ago with a role as demanding as Imogene from ‘Il Pirata’ by Bellini, was met with tremendous success. As the soprano herself stated on one of the occasions when she addressed the public “this repertoire is a beauty”, “it is not easy at all” and “it is totally new for me”, because although she knows the language and handles it with some ease, since she took part in the second edition of the Teatro Real’s Opera-studio project (2009) interpreting Don Pasquale’s Norina, she had never faced the quintessential Spanish lyrical genre. 
A voice of excellent quality and a singular personality were the bases of Yoncheva’s triumph. Her powerful timbre, wide flow, turgid center of undoubted timbral seduction, with sounds of enormous quality, filled the hall on Jovellanos Street and captivated the audience. (…) the fascination of an especially gifted vocal instrument, to which personality, dedication and courage are added. (…)
The sumptuous, wide and well-polished timbre, intensity and accents, with a remarkable pronunciation of Spanish, shone in the performance of the Bulgarian soprano. After listening to Saioa Hernández just a month ago on the same stage, Yoncheva gave us the opportunity to listen again, which is appreciated in the absence of being able to witness the complete work one day, the romanza “Lágrimas mías en dónde estáis» from El anillo de hierro by Miguel Marqués, a piece with a dramatic substrate and operatic tone, exhibited with spirit and vigor by the protagonist of the recital. The timbral qualities of the artist’s instrument and her capacity for singing deep lyricism in the beautiful, but little-heard romance “La luz de la tarde» de “El pájaro azul”, zarzuela, today forgotten, by Rafael Millán premiered at the Tívoli Theater in Barcelona in 1921, which marks 100 years since its premiere, and which makes its selection for this recital even more timely. The first part of concluded with the splendid «Yo me ví en el mundo desamparada» from El juramento by Joazquín Gaztambide, a beautiful piece of Italian Belcantist affiliation and in which Yoncheva was able to show off first-class legato in some well-finished long sentences, in which she was able to display her meaty center, of great attractiveness and timbral richness. 
The second part, without interruption, began with the appearance of a self-assured Alejandro del Cerro, who phrased in a vibrant and salutary way the “Vaya una tarde bonita” that paved the way for Soleá and Rafael’s flamboyant duo from ‘El gato montés’, which was suitably incandescent – including orchestra and baton – despite the distance between the performers. 
Already in this second part of the evening, Yoncheva’s privileged timbre, already fully settled, totally liberated, sounded especially full of shine, color and richness of harmonics, as could be seen in the magnificent interpretation of Ascension’s romanza «No corté más que una rosa »from La del manojo de rosas, in which Yoncheva’s temperament, communicative power and charisma made sure that we were particularly interested in Ascension’s troubles. Likewise, in the famous “De España vengo” from Pablo Luna’s ‘El niño judío’, the personality of the Bulgarian soprano, singing in good Spanish – the text could be followed without any problem – which allowed her more than accentuate, savor each word, made it possible that such a trite piece sounded like new to us, also the melismas in “veeengo” and “soy” could be clearly heard, something that does not always happen. Splendid soloist, orchestra and jailers’ chorus of Ruperto Chapí’s ‘Las hijas del Zebedeo’, with Yoncheva’s varied, fiery and rapturous accents and good performance of the agility passages.
An example of “bravura” that caused an uproar of ovations in the room.
The contrast with the Caribbean rhythms of Gonzalo Roig’s Cecilia Valdés was not a problem for the Bulgarian singer who interpreted the piece with self-confidence, already with the audience totally in her pocket and culminated with somewhat open but full and timbred high note. Bravos, shouts of “Thank you! Beautiful!” by an energized audience. Yoncheva thanked for the ovations, stressed, as I underlined above, the beauty and difficulty of the Zarzuela repertoire, which was totally new for her. As encores, the Plovdid born soprano returned to interpret the flamenco song from La marchenera, her favorite piece of those performed, as she stated, before performing a sensual habanera by Carmen climbing on to the conductor’s podium, as he accompanied her from the piano. She then said goodbye to the frenzied audience with a “Goodbye, no, see you soon.” 
Raul Chamorro Mena, Codalario
  
“Intense Zarzuela with Sonya Yoncheva in Madrid!” 
“For her first visit to the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid (and the only date dedicated to this music genre in her international tours), Sonya Yoncheva was dressed in red “pasión” tulle, a shade that announces the color of a dramatic engagement until one is no longer thirsty. The course of the evening is quite astonishing: first vocally in Italy, she approaches Spain, to brush against her, to titillate her and finally to kiss her, and finally flies off to Cuba. In the current capital of the performing arts, the audience, however accustomed to interpretations more in their original state, applauds wholeheartedly, because the Bulgarian soprano is delighted by this repertoire. 
Style and charm are Sonya Yoncheva’s essential strengths. (…) With Moreno Torroba, we begin to feel Puccini’s shadow, the vertigo of long sentences and the emotional roller coaster. In ‘La luz de la tarde se va’, it is impossible not to think of her Verdian heroines. Some would say that tradition should not be sacrificed at all, but isn’t a singer who travels all over the world allowed to be able to give her own vision of Spain, or even be able to assess better than anyone else a national identity? Those who love her work can attest to her embodiment with no concession. Whoever comes to listen to it at the Teatro de la Zarzuela expects two worlds to meet. The Spanish pronunciation is certainly a little watered down compared to the rough consonants and the straight vowels that we are entitled to expect, but it offers a theatrical language of its own making, which even if it does not make the language of Cervantes intelligible, is directly linked to its so recognizable velvety timbre. 
It is with her duet with Alejandro del Cerro that we realize the furrow she has carved out previously with the models of the zarzuela. The fiery tenor impresses with the rhythm of his diction and sturdy voice, from an eloquent low register to smoothly projected high notes. In front of him, the soprano smirks deliciously, aware of her role as femme fatale adept at ‘follow me, I flee’. And this is where you wonder if the momentum she set off beforehand does not stray too far from the quick and spirited mind that one should hear. But an energy returns to her from this point, she sees her Zarzuelian copy again. She even allows herself to play with stereotypes, pierce the soul and talk between the lines. And that’s it, she goes beyond this point of the performance to take the spectators with her in an intimate space. She looks at us, she bewitches us. A man shouts “gracias” to her, she blows him a kiss from her hand. (…) she sings in exquisite unison with the clarinet. Obviously, Luna’s song, “De España vengo” puts the audience in a trance. She ends the concert with a Havana zarzuela that turns the heat up, and her sensual and relaxed dance steps are the icing on the cake of a magical evening. Sonya Yoncheva is no longer experimenting, she has dropped the corset. 
As an encore, Sonya Yoncheva repeats “Tres horas antes del día”, her favorite tune. No longer the hesitant teenager of the early evening, she is now free from stage fright and is deeply moving. Then in Carmen’s Habanera (where Miquel Ortega swapped the podium for the piano chair), the incredible rubato makes one shiver and blush. The questions of the beginning dissipated in the renewed certainty of the stage animal. Sonya Yoncheva has indeed proven that she is made for Zarzuela! 
Thibault Vicq, Opera Online
 
“The Teatro de la Zarzuela puts on a gala to receive Sonya Yoncheva , the soprano who has caused a sensation in Paris, La Scala or Salzburg, takes on the challenge of adjusting to a repertoire further removed from the Verdian lyricism with which she has raised so many passions in the most prestigious stages around the world. This time the program focused exclusively on our national lyrical genre –or so Barbieri would say–: the Zarzuela. 
Although I missed something else from the repertoire of the great Zarzuela of the XIX century –I lacked names like Bretón, Fernández Caballero, Arrieta or Barbieri himself–, we were able to listen to a varied assortment of the best of our national genre. Especially those lyrical romances for soprano in which Yoncheva’s powerful stream of voice fit so well. 
“It started with the most beautiful Noche hermosa of the Katiuska de Sorozábal. Her voice filled the auditorium… . We were able to appreciate her knowledge of the works and the text, (…) Also from Sorozábal came another jewel of our repertoire, ‘No corté más que una rosa’, which gave the soprano the opportunity to show her abilities in a lower register and with diminuendo that would pose a challenge for any singer. With the romance ‘Yo me vi en el mundo desamparada’ from  ‘El juramento’, by Gaztambide, Yoncheva demonstrated an intelligent use of legato to build the long melodic lines that could well be typical of Bellini or Donizetti if they had used the texts of Luis de Olona. 
Another paragraph deserves those works that, with the same lyricism, place greater emphasis on properly Spanish rhythms. This is the case of the flamenco song of  La Marchenera ‘Tres horas antes del día’ by Moreno Torroba. Yoncheva dared singing it twice. It was the second, as the first encore in which she was able to master the complex rhythm of this flamenco song, although on both occasions she showed grace and produced a vocal stream in the high notes at the end that caused an absolute delight in the audience. Another challenge was also the famous romance ‘Al pensar en dueño de mis amores’ from ‘Las hijas del Zebedeov’ by Chapí. A work popularized internationally thanks to the Latvian Elīna Garanča that is inspired by the flamenco genre of the ‘jailers’. Its fast and marked pace pose a challenge for anyone. Even more so in the case of artists like Yoncheva, who stands out precisely for always trying to sing with a very clear pronunciation. In this regard, she made clear an absolute command of Spanish, perhaps thanks to the help she can receive from her husband,the Venezuelan director Domingo Hindoyan, and Miquel Ortega who during the concert she thanked for his help to work on how to internalize the art and grace of the Spanish woman. 
(…) Let us not forget to talk about the only ‘ensemble’ piece: the duet ‘Vaya una tarde bonita!’  from Penella’s ‘El gato montes’, in which tenor Alejandro del Cerro dressed – figuratively – as a toreador to put himself in the shoes of the bullfighter Rafael, declaiming with an Andalusian accent that would never accuse his Cantabrian origin. (…)
It was, in short, a recital to remember. Sonya Yoncheva demonstrated her bravery by dealing with a repertoire that she repeatedly admitted to her difficulty. But this did not prevent her from enjoying the vocalization, ornaments and gypsy songs of ‘De España vengo’ or dancing with the mestizo rhythms of Cecilia Valdés. In short, she demonstrated that zarzuela is not only music of great quality and at the height of the international repertoire, but that it is also made to be enjoyed. We can only hope that her example will influence other great artists who will contribute to continue exporting the best we have: our art.” 
David Santana Cañas, Bachtrack 
 
“Sonya Yoncheva’s total success at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in a Spanish lyric repertoire” 
“(…) Sonya Yoncheva proved she not only to possess an instrument of undisputed quality, a luminous, sunny voice which fills the hall with overtones, with a very powerful middle register and a remarkable Spanish phrasing, but she also showed a tremendous courage as she interpreted with extraordinary success a repertoire of “romanas” that sent the audience into a frenzy. ” 
Brio Clasíca 
 
“’With this concert, Yoncheva makes her debut at the Teatro de la Zarzuela, which is unique in the world, and adds the Zarzuela Grande to her exquisite repertoire, thus highlighting the attraction and recognition that our lyrical genre increasingly arouses outside our borders.’ The expectation that this proposal aroused, with a full theater and sold-out tickets within the capacity required by the pandemic, was indescribable and at the end of the excerpt from Bizet’s Carmen, the audience surely thought that they had not been disappointed. It so happens that the singer appeared with the accompaniment of an orchestra and not a pianist, as is often the case in regular recitals. The musical direction, then, was the responsibility of Miquel Ortega.  
Alejandro del Cerro was the tenor singing alongside the soprano in a single, but very successful time in ‘El gato montés’. The duet was funny, suggestive, very authentic, but without the over-acting to which some specialists have accustomed to the public. He received a lot of applause. 
How to describe Yoncheva’s performance and personality, so geographically far from her universe of origin and so emotionally related to the tradition of Spanish zarzuela music? Bulgaria has offered to the world of opera great characters and singers, the well-known divas of Raïna Kabaivanska, Ghéna Dimitrova or Svetla Vassileva or the basses Boris Christoff, or Nicolaï Ghiaurov, for example. The soprano Sonya Yoncheva comes after a fast rise, with a varied and rich repertoire, family life, husband, children, what the French would call “une femme accomplie”. Her Spanish diction would be difficult to improve. The singer has a wealth of colors, darker, brighter, an indisputable legato, a phrasing and a secure technique, which at almost 40 years makes foresee further changes and embellishments. She moves her waist and her entire body while she accompanies the score, which she seems to have known her whole life. There is a close identification between her idiosyncrasy and the repertoire chosen for the Madrid coliseum, which is not easy. 
She performed gracefully and nonchalance on stage, clad in a striking vermilion red strapless dress, which she adjusted from time to time and fell in a cascade of ruffles with a train. With matching red earrings, (…) she sang like a diva and still had time at the end, for comedic theatrical dances with one of the musicians from the string section. The soprano is an unleashed force of nature in the fullness of her age, as fresh as her voice, lush and interrelated with magic with the audience of the Teatro de La Zarzuela, (…) During the recital, it was possible to enjoy ‘Noche hermosa’ from ‘Katiuska’, by Sorozábal, ‘La luz de la tarde se va’, from ‘El pájaro azu’, by Rafael Millán, from Gaztambide, ‘Yo me vi en el undo desamparada’, romanza from ‘El juramento’,’De España vengo’, from ‘El niño judío’, by Pablo Luna. At the culmination of the evening, it came the turn of ‘Cecilia Valdés’, the Cuban and evocative composition of Gonzalo Roig, those present had already applauded and cheered. 
During the forced lockdown, Yoncheva did not stop and performed a streaming recital from the NY Metropolitan Opera together with other great singers. In Spain, she gave other concerts on this tour and her work will continue in the countries that are opening up in post-pandemic opera performances. She will perhaps sing, again with her brother, Marin Yonchev, well known in their native country. Her calendar goes on and on … 
(…) 
She adapted her last appearance outside the program like a glove to the Spanish zarzuela repertoire, because she sang Bizet’s Carmen Habanera, ‘L´amour est un oiseau rebelle’ to the delight of the public, with bare feet, moving her waist, as if to demonstrate to the audience that, like the defiant and brave cigarette woman, another woman who breaks and tears, she is also a free and determined, beautiful creature that, as they would say in Federico García Lorca’s work, ‘wants to and can’. A chosen privilege, and a way of being in the world, of course. 
AAVV, Operaclick 

Photo by Javier del Real