Никола Китановски

Belgrade has been Nikola Kitanovski's professional home for most of his working life. Born in Skopje, where he completed his schooling, he took bachelor's and master's degrees in solo singing at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade in the class of Biserka Cvejić, and from 1987 was singing as a soloist across the centres of the former Yugoslavia. First prize at the Katia Ricciarelli competition in Mantua followed in 1991, and the annual award of the National Theatre in Belgrade in 1995. His is the heavy Italian and Slavic tenor repertoire — Otello, Radamès, Manrico, Calaf, Cavaradossi, Turiddu, Don José, Hermann, Rodolfo, Pinkerton — sung across more than two decades with the Belgrade company and on stages in Rome, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Madrid, Tokyo and Moscow. A gala in Belgrade on 25 June 2016, pairing Cavalleria rusticana with Pagliacci, marked twenty-five years of that career. He has taught at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade since 2004 and directs the opera studio of the National Theatre.