Jūrmala Festival. Gala Concert. The Most Beautiful Opera Arias

Artists:

Aleksandrs Antonenko, tenor
Zanda Švēde, mezzo-soprano
Jūrmala Festival Orchestra
Conductor: Mārtiņš Ozoliņš

On 18 July, the concert “Gala Concert. The Most Beautiful Opera Arias” will feature tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko, mezzo-soprano Zanda Švēde, and the Jūrmala Festival Orchestra under the direction of conductor Mārtiņš Ozoliņš.

Aleksandrs Antonenko has conquered the stages of the world’s leading opera houses and concert halls over the past decade, performing nearly 30 tenor roles. Since 2004, Antonenko has been Latvia’s most internationally acclaimed tenor, regularly engaged by major opera houses in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Graz, Dresden, Oslo, Stockholm, Rome, Milan, New York, Vienna, Hamburg, Barcelona, Paris, London, Geneva, Zurich, and elsewhere. In 2008, he made his debut at the Salzburg Festival in the title role of Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello, and has also appeared at the Salzburg Easter Festival and the Savonlinna Opera Festival. He received the Latvian Grand Music Award in 2003 for his vocal performances in opera productions and Verdi’s Requiem, and is a laureate of the Jussi Björling Prize and Austria’s Grand Prix de la Culture. In 2014, he was awarded Latvia’s Excellence Award in Culture, and in 2016 was decorated with the Order of the Three Stars.

Zanda Švēde is a Latvian mezzo-soprano who, after completing her studies at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, participated in the Merola Opera Program in the United States and was an Adler Fellow at San Francisco Opera for three years. Since 2018, she has been a soloist at the Frankfurt Opera. Her repertoire includes title roles in Carmen, Orlando and Xerxes, as well as Cornelia in Giulio Cesare, Herodias in Salome, Clairon in Capriccio, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly, Hedwige in Rodelinda, Maddalena in Rigoletto, and many others, performed at the Frankfurt Opera. In the 2024/2025 season, Švēde took part in Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung at the Tirol Festival Erl in Austria, singing Erda in Das Rheingold and Siegfried, and Waltraute in Götterdämmerung. She has also appeared as Olga in Eugene Onegin at Opera Idaho, Grimgerde in Die Walküre and Maddalena in Rigoletto at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly at Palm Beach Opera, and in more than ten roles at San Francisco Opera.

Conductor Mārtiņš Ozoliņš received his musical education at the Emīls Dārziņš Special Music Secondary School and graduated from the Latvian Academy of Music, where he studied choral conducting in the class of Edgars Račevskis, earning a Bachelor’s degree (1996) and a Master’s degree (1998). He also completed Imants Rešnis’s symphonic orchestra conducting class in 2003. Ozoliņš further refined his professional skills in masterclasses with Helmuth Rilling in Germany, Gintaras Rinkevičius in Lithuania, and Vasily Sinaisky in Saint Petersburg. Already during his studies, he achieved notable success in international conducting competitions, including first prize at the Riga ’97 International Conducting Competition and at the IV Jorma Panula International Conducting Competition (2009).