Soprano Sonya Yoncheva’s 10 Year “Rebirth”

“It is true. I started to think about this 10 years ago. That was the time where I started to deal with different labels. I was a young singer at the time. I was just about to do all my debuts everywhere. So I had a few conversations with labels and I had to choose which to record. I proposed this and all of them said, ‘it’s not commercial enough for us, maybe we should start with something else.'”

Soprano Sonya Yoncheva is talking about her new album Rebirth on Sony Classical. Rather than follow a traditional concept like her previous albums of the works of Giuseppe Verdi, George Frideric Handel and an album of arias from French operas, Yoncheva is tackling primarily Baroque music on Rebirth. There are a few exceptions including a Bulgarian folk song (she’s from Bulgaria) and that one song by Abba which she included because it relies on the same for notes for its structure as Hear me, O God by composer Alfonso Ferrabosco II (also on the album).

Yoncheva came to prominence when she won the 2010 Operalia competition. Offers to join opera productions around the world came her way. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in a 2013 production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Lead roles in Otello, La Bohème, La Traviata, Luisa Miller and Médée followed. This summer she will make her role debut as the title character in Aida.

Last week I spoke by phone with Yoncheva who was in her home in Switzerland and she began by explaining how she realized the record labels were actually right about waiting to do Rebirth.

“Today with all those years I’ve been recording, I understand,” she says. “It’s written and performed for a specific audience. That’s why I basically didn’t record it in that time. I think it’s maybe better for a singer to establish the career already and little by little you can propose things you like and are more personal to you.”

She was able to record the album last summer after the first lockdown in Europe. She found the project had a distinct resonance to our modern times.

“Artists are very personal when we present projects like that,” she offers. “I think that the world was in such a state before this pandemic. I think it was worse before. Rebirth is more a less a mirror of what’s happening around me. In my work I always try to underline those things. I wanted to get spiritual.”

Though she told me it wasn’t truly a risk now, Yoncheva thrives on taking risks. As she will when she performs in Aida. She has had many opportunities to perform the role before.

“It’s a role that I always refused many many times. When they first proposed me this I thought they were totally insane,” she says followed by a laugh. “Many years ago when I was starting I couldn’t understand the woman. In my own life I would never keep my tongue in my mouth as we say here. If I love someone I will go for it and I will forget about anything else. Duty is important, but I would make it important that I would love my man and have my duties as a queen. Why can’t she say the truth? Still I’m struggling with it. The music is so fascinating. Maybe now is the time I could give it a try.”

She’ll be performing the role of the Ethiopian princess at a time when casting issues are omnipresent. It’s a reality that is not lost on Yoncheva.

“I always try to put myself in the place of others. I could feel a lot of pain around this topic. I don’t know how we can solve this. She is where she is from and she needs to be presented exactly as the composer wanted her to be. At the same time, I don’t really find the way how to solve the problem of casting the best Aida. Perhaps the best answer will be only to do a concert version to keep the music alive.”

When she takes to the stage of Arena di Verona, it will be the first production in which she’s appeared in eight months. Yoncheva says the difficultly of that long a layoff is massive.

“You cannot imagine. It’s like saying to Roger Federer he won’t play for eight months and all of a sudden he has the US Open. I can do all the exercises at home and warm my voice, but it’s never the same. How you can start and finish a show? It’s something very real. I’m very impatient to do something on stage with real costumes and see what happens.”

Yoncheva’s recent Met Opera Stars Live in Concert (available on demand through April 4th) included L’hymne a l’amour and she made a point of saying it was written by two women (Édith Piaf and Marguerite Monnot). I asked her about it and she was very intentional in giving them credit.

“I know we are talking a lot about this and I find that this is a very old topic. I was reading recently a book about courtesans in the Venetian period and one of them, Veronica Franco, was one of the first courtesans to talk about the right of a woman to exist and be considered a human being. I said to myself this happened in the 15th century and we still talk about that.”

“The force of a woman is also this ability to put people together and keep the balance in family and in business or artistic relations. It’s really interesting to do more research and see who those women were in music history. I’m working on a little project so you’re understanding this is important to me.”

As our conversation was nearing its end, I asked her about something Bangladeshi poet Munia Khan said, “The easiest way to be reborn is to live and feel life every day.” It came as no surprise that she wholeheartedly endorses that way of thinking.

“I think the most important part is to be totally honest. First of all with yourself and then with others. This is what is also called respect and love – those kind of feelings you can express in such simple ways. When I’m on stage there aren’t many filters. I’m singing a part, of course, but this is the way to give this kind of green light to this personality to come into your body and to perform them in the best way. You are the one to communicate with the audience.

“I think honesty always pays back. We must, a little bit, escape from the artificial way of communicating and just be humans. It’s so simple. It’s simple to say it. As an artist I’m singing for this.”

Photo: Sonya Yoncheva (©Javier del Real)