Silke Hartstang

From 2013 Silke Hartstang sang with the State Opera Rousse, appearing with the company both at home in Ruse and on its Sofia dates, in casts alongside Alexander Baranov, Plamen Beykov, Elena Baramova and Stoyan Daskalov. Her singing began in pop and rock, and in 1995 the German rock and pop musicians' association named her the country's best pop singer; she then took the Konzertexamen as an opera and concert singer at the Hochschule fuer Musik Koeln with Reinhard Leisenheimer and Klesie Kelly-Moog, and a teaching diploma at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. She made her Verdi debut as Fenena in Nabucco in 2013 and sang her first dramatic mezzo role, Amneris in Aida, at the State Opera Rousse the following year; in November 2016 she returned to Fenena at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia. She has appeared at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, Oper Koeln, Theater Hagen and the Wuppertaler Buehnen, sung the alto solos in Bach's Christmas Oratorio and Mozart's Requiem, and taught voice at the University of Cologne.