Sonya Yoncheva in Rusalka with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, 19 June 2026 / Photo: Bellboy Studios
Sonya Yoncheva‘s summer has included mostly concert work, but she has bookended her summer with two role debuts: in June, she sang her first Rusalka in Liverpool and in September, she’ll sing Julia in La Vestale in Berlin. Today, Parterre Box features her and tenor Pavel Černoch in the final duet from Dvorák’s opera, recorded live earlier this summer.
One never does know what to expect with Yoncheva, if she sings at all, that is; in the early music that made her famous, she can still be charming, but as Parterre Box critic Eli Jacobson observed during her most recent appearance in New York, her voice is now “a brittle sound that cannot take pressure and does not have much in reserve. There was a consistent element of pushing through without much plushness of tone underneath. Yoncheva is only 44, but she seemed like a canny veteran powering through while conserving and consolidating what voice she has left.”
Rusalka is, of course, heavier, but not quite as heavy as the verismo roles that await her this season: Manon Lescaut and Tosca in Zurich, Fedora in Madrid, Maddalena in Rome. And then there’s the matter of Medea which she’s scheduled to sing in New York in the fall. (Let’s just say that Anna Pirozzi has a gap in her schedule right around then.) But Yoncheva’s future-most engagement according to her website? Surprisingly, Handel’s Cleopatra next summer in Versailles.
For Černoch, Yoncheva’s Liverpool Prince, Slavic repertoire is his bread and butter; next season includes appearances in The Bartered Bride in Vienna as well as Sergei opposite the Katerina Izmailova of Aušrinė Stundytė in Paris and the Laca to Asmik Grigorian’s Jenůfa in Barcelona.
Today’s conductor, Domingo Hindoyan, the Chief Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic as well as Yoncheva’s husband, began his tenure as the Music Director of LA Opera in June; this season, he’ll conduct Carmen there in the fall and return for Nabucco in the spring. The latter run will mark the U.S. opera debut of baritone Ariunbaatar Ganbataar.
Dvorák: Rusalka, “Líbej mne, líbej, mír mi přej”
Sonya Yoncheva
Pavel Černoch
Jongmin Park
Conductor: Domingo Hindoyan
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
19 June 2026
In-house
