In the professional singers category of the Mimas music festival, Lucie Kaňková took first place.
Czech coloratura soprano Lucie Kaňková can add another to her list of competitive successes: she has now won the professional singers category of the Italian Mimas Music Festival. She participated with the arias of the Queen of the Night from Mozart’s The Magic Flute “Der Hölle Rache”, Philine from Ambroise Thomas’s opera Mignon “Je suis Titania” and Gilda “Caro nome” from Verdi’s Rigoletto.
“All three competition arias are very close to me and I have them in my heart. I think it was clear from the recordings on the first listen and it significantly helped me win,” says Lucie Kaňková. “I now sing the Queen of the Night regularly at the Prague Estates Theatre, I am planning to take her to a festival in Switzerland at the Opernspiele Munot and this autumn to a tour of Japan with the Hungarian State Opera. I have commitments with this role in other foreign theatres for two years ahead. The role of Gilda is something I love and I was very lucky to play it in Liège, Belgium.” Lucie literally jumped into the local production of Verdi’s Rigoletto overnight and earned great reviews. She was also chosen as a cover for the role of Philine and Donna Anna there.
The Mimas Music Festival competition is held annually in the fields of piano, violin and opera singing on the Italian island of Procida, which was declared the Italian Capital of Culture 2022. The prize also includes automatic participation in the final rounds of several international singing competitions, gala concerts and participation in the festival on the island of Procida, as well as many offers for auditions and roles on European opera stages. The second place went to the interpreter of mainly Baroque opera literature, soprano Cressida Sharp, and the third place went to the member of the Bremen Opera ensemble, soprano María Martín González.
Soprano Lucie Kaňková is the winner of many singing awards. She graduated from the music academies in Bern and Lucerne in Switzerland. Since 2018, she has performed regularly on Czech and foreign opera stages, where she has performed, among others, the roles of Violetta in La Traviata, Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, Poppea in the opera The Coronation of Poppaea, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte or Barče in Smetana’s Kiss. She started this year’s opera season with La Traviata in Chisinau, Moldova, on live TV and made her debut as the Queen of the Night in Prague and is preparing other roles there. This year, her artistic commitments also took her to Liège, Belgium, where she made her debut as Gidla and covered the roles of Donna Anna and Philine. In the summer of 2022, she will perform the role of Raffaelle in the baroque opera The Return of Tobias at the Znojmo Music Festival. Lucie Kaňková certainly didn’t idle during the Covid restrictions and managed to win several prizes in international singing competitions, for example, in the spring of 2021 she won the Nomea world singing competition and six months earlier she won the audience award in the Australian online singing competition. Now she is reaping the rewards in the form of offers to work in many international cultural institutions.
Gilda:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrMcVeMikZA
Philine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hoht_szD8O8
Královna noci: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1DVwW-uq_8
