Taking another fearless leap: Sonya Yoncheva

“I totally forgot to look where I had to jump. All I could see was a big white cross and I just leapt for it!” The opera just has to be Tosca. The soprano in question is Sonya Yoncheva. We meet at the Wiener Staatsoper two days after her 44th performance as Puccini’s diva, but that’s nothing compared to the production itself. Margarethe Wallmann’s staging opened in 1958 – starring Renata Tebaldi, no less – and had clocked up its 658th performance. 

“Everyone has seen this production over the last 70 years,” she confesses. “What else can we do? What else can we say? But you always find something fresh to give. We did four nights and they were all different.”

The performance was indeed incredible, full of brilliant little nuances and viscerally acted, remarkable on minimal rehearsal time. Yoncheva displayed great charisma in the title role, ably supported by Piotr Beczała’s Cavaradossi and Ambrogio Maestri (“the last guy I’d want to kill!”) as Scarpia.

Isn’t the joy of a traditional staging like Wallmann’s that it allows the singers to bring their own interpretations without the straitjacket of a director’s Konzept? “We live in a very interesting time now,” Yoncheva begins, “because in the last, let's say, 20 years or more, the protagonism was taken away from singers and given to directors. There is nothing more strange. I find it very sad. It's time that we give this protagonism back to the singers. Opera is about this.”

There have been occasions, Yoncheva tells me – without naming names – when she has walked from a production where she didn’t believe in a directorial concept. “It’s happened. But then, with the same director, we later did some amazing stuff. 

“We are all artists and we have the right to be wrong. Sometimes the magic is just not there. Let's face it, we work in a huge industry where we barely have time to breathe. We are just machines. If you’re not hyperactive, you can't really do this job. It’s hard to make time to rest because something always comes along. ‘Oh, my God, I really want to do this production. I want to come back to this role.’”

She recounts a recent last minute engagement to go and sing in Riyadh. “I really enjoy situations like that. It's a part of the game. Adrenalin, adrenalin. Then you feel like a kind of a superhero.”

The Bulgarian soprano has a reputation for versatility. She started out in Baroque, an alumna of William Christie’s Le Jardin des Voix academy, and her repertoire encompasses Mozart, Verdi and verismo. She also enjoys a reputation for being able to learn roles very quickly, such as her debut as Norma, a fearless leap, at Covent Garden when Anna Netrebko ducked out. Where does this musical curiosity come from? 

“First, this curiosity is because I am kind of an animal. I would hear music and have to listen from A to Z. It's very important for me to know the piece. And then I get inspired by the characters. Sometimes they're a great source of not only inspiration, but can also push you into new worlds. For example, I couldn’t imagine singing Medea. When Daniel Barenboim asked me to do it in Berlin, I was singing Traviata, maybe Tatyana or Mimì. How on earth could anyone imagine me as Medea? But it provoked my curiosity. And literally her character was the reason for me to jump into the role.

“Of course, you have to always calculate the risks you take, because vocally, these are monsters. Norma was a big challenge. It was very strange because it was in May 2016 when I received a call from Maestro Pappano. I was in a hospital, where my father was dying and so it was a very particular moment. I went through the score and thought about the offer. I was so busy, thinking about my father, but in the end, I saw his life was gone, he was dead. For me, it was urgent to get back into life. So I said, okay, I’ll go for it. I don't care. I don't fear anything. I don't feel any fear.”

I ask if Yoncheva has a favourite repertoire. “If you stick to verismo for a long time, then you lose the connection with other worlds. I don't want to lose that. I like being a versatile singer. You were asking me if it's difficult to switch, and it is. If I was singing Tosca now, I would certainly need three or four days to come back to normal vocal health.”

Besides Tosca, Yoncheva is principally in Vienna to rehearse a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta at the Staatsoper, a role I saw her debut in Paris in a controversial Dmitri Tcherniakov double bill which paired it with its original St Petersburg dance partner, The Nutcracker. She recalls the rehearsal experience.

“I worked for over 40 days with Dima and I remember him being really close to my face, like a television camera. He would look into my eyes and when those moments of Iolanta’s big emotional feelings occurred, he would start to cry. And I was crying with him. It was very intense. I learned so much from him.”

The Staatsoper’s Iolanta is directed by Evgeny Titov, making his house debut. Yoncheva is hugely enthusiastic. “Evgeny is fun, fun, fun! He's a great actor, demonstrating things to us the whole time; his body language, his gestures, they're so absolutely real. He has this capacity to get inside a personality within seconds. I love to work with people like that: curious, open minded, easy-going. It's teamwork. It's not, as we talked about before, all about ‘the concept’. I like to trust the stage director; for me, they can be like a mirror.”

“On one level, Iolanta is a fairy tale, but it also asks so many questions. Is it actually better if she is blind or not? What is the truth? Why do we need colour? What colour is love? Is Vaudemont really the only one who tells her the truth? And a father who is ashamed to have this kind of daughter because she's handicapped?”

Later this season, Yoncheva takes on another Tchaikovsky heroine, her role debut as Lisa in Pique Dame at the Metropolitan Opera. At the moment, having only previously sung one of her arias, the role is still under construction. “Lisa is much more mature vocally than Iolanta. There is a lot of work in the middle voice. My theory is that as long as I keep my middle voice healthy, then many things are possible. This is actually my speaking voice, this is where it is situated. I had previous experience in these kinds of roles, like Fedora, for instance. The difference here is the language, because the Slavic language is a little more tender to the vocal cords than Italian, which is quite open.

Tatyana in Eugene Onegin is another Tchaikovsky role Yoncheva tried on for size… but didn’t like the fit. “I just was bored in this huge Letter Scene. Maybe, I can admit it, I was quite young and not in the right production. Tatyana’s music in the final act is amazing though, with her being more mature and rejecting Onegin. I just love that, rather than writing letters and begging him, which is beautiful but absolutely naive. Maybe I was not in the right moment in my life, which doesn't mean I wouldn't go back to the role.”

There are other new roles on Yoncheva’s horizon. “I'll be taking on Spontini’s La Vestale,” she reveals. “I would love to explore more Gluck, if I can, and Anna Bolena. These are tough roles. I will also do some Slavic repertoire – Rusalka. I will repeat Medea. I could certainly explore German repertoire a little bit later, Wagner for sure.” [At short notice, Yoncheva sang “Dich, teure Halle” at last season’s Staatsoper season presentation!]

In the (improbable) event that she were to wake up as a mezzo-soprano, she’d love to sing Eboli in Don Carlos. “And if I wake up as a tenor, I would sing Otello for sure. He is somebody who is so divided, so tortured with this psychological aspect. Also Verdi’s vocal line is absolutely incredible.”

Yoncheva’s fearless approach is allied to steely determination and an entrepreneurial spirit. With big recording labels distinctly unadventurous these days, she set up her own company, SY11. “It was actually by chance,” she explains. “I have always wanted to be free. I hate being restricted or simple things taking seven, eight, nine months to decide.” So far, she’s recorded two albums – Courtesan and a disc dedicated to George Sand. There's a glossy book, Fifteen Mirrors, celebrating 15 roles. She’s staged concerts too… which is where the enterprise all began.

“When Covid came, that was the turning point for me. Suddenly it was a total blackout. We had time and then your brain starts to get over-creative. I was full of ideas. I wanted to sing a concert in my hometown of Plovdiv, but it was not possible because everything was shut down, no theatres were open, nothing. It was in the summer that we got a phone call saying that if Ms Yoncheva wants to do a concert in the Roman amphitheatre, she can do it, but she has to have her own enterprise to run it. Oh, my God. Me? An enterprise? I'm an artist.

“That was in the spring and the concert was in August. So I had literally two months to create a company and do all the administration. I loved it, being surrounded by my team and being creative. People were so happy with the results, so we did a huge concert after Covid with Plácido Domingo in front of 8,000 people. It was a big affirmation of how culture is important to people.”

In 2023 the Courtesan CD came out, encompassing roles from Violetta and Manon to Thais and Dalila. It was a project that she had already pitched to Sony, but they felt it wouldn’t be commercial enough. Yoncheva harbours no grudge. “I have a huge respect for them. Recording opera today is not really a priority. After all, this is a business. It’s not a time when CDs sell out and Spotify is not really a source you can earn from, especially for young singers. But recording opera on CD continues to be as expensive as before, even much more.

“Knowing as a producer how much it costs, I understand their point of view. But I decided that you only live once, so let me record what I really want to record. I don't care how many discs I sell. That was the critical point where I just took my freedom into my own hands.”

Her latest album is based on the female French writer who went under the pseudonym George Sand. “I'm fascinated by her, because she was absolutely exceptional: as a woman, as a human being, as an author, as somebody who would walk in the street and not care about taboos. She had many lovers, including Chopin, possibly Liszt, then switched to this beautiful actress Marie Dorval with whom she was completely in love. Imagine being bisexual at that time! This woman just dared to be who she wanted to be.

“Not least, she was a huge admirer and protector of the arts, at the epicentre of Parisian cultural life, so I decided to bring this aspect with music that her friends wrote to the CD.” Yoncheva also reads some of Sand’s writing “because I wanted her to exist on the disc too” and has plans to bring the recital programme to the stage.

“I am an artist who believes in art and culture like somebody would believe in their God. For me, culture is the salvation, the key for the best society.” 

Click here to see Sonya Yoncheva’s forthcoming performances.