Fabrizio Melano is an established figure on the international opera scene, having worked with leading houses throughout the world for more than 40 years. He began a long-standing relationship with the Metropolitan Opera in 1969 and has directed 21 operas there, among them seven new or revised productions. Much of his work has been seen in PBS’s Live from the Met series, including his stagings of La Bohème (which inaugurated the series in 1977), Il Trittico, Les Troyens (which also opened the Met’s centennial season in 1983), and Il Trovatore. Mr. Melano has worked with most of the major American and Canadian opera companies, including five productions at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and four with the New York City Opera. He assisted Maria Callas in her staging ofI Vespri Siciliani at Torino’s Teatro Regio and has directed at such companies as the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Opéra de Monte-Carlo, and the English National Opera. He directed Tony Randall in his last play, Pirandello’s Right You Are, with the National Actors Theater and staged a new musical, Asylum, at the York Theatre Company. At Juilliard he directed Dialogues des Carmélites in 2010 and the 2012 Met+Juilliard co-production of Armide.

Kms Olivera Miljaković, soprano,studied solo singing with Mile Stojadinovi?, Josip Rijavica and Nikola Cvjetić, and later furthered her studies with Gina Cinga. She was engaged by National Theatre Belgrade Opera for two years and in 1963 became a member of Vienna State Opera where she accomplished stunning career as a soloist. Olivera Miljaković performed on many important opera and concert stages and festivals with conductors such as Leonard Bernstein,  Zubin Mehta, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Lorin Maazel, Georges Prêtre, Carlos Kleiber and Herbert von Karajan. She also participated in a number of noticeable opera discography productions with same conductors.
Since 1980 she has run a private school for solo singing and from 1987 till 1991 she worked as a professor in the Opera Studio of Vienna State Opera. Olivera Miljaković holds many master classes and concerts all over the world; she is music director of Basano del Grapa festival, and from 2003 music director of Ambassadors concert.
In 1984 she was given the honorific title Kammersägerin for distinguished singers of opera, the highest title that Austria and Germany give to their singers. For her work in the field of culture, she was awarded with Golden Ring of the Vienna State Opera and with Silver and Golden Medal from the Republic of Austria.

Tibor Bogányi, conductor, gained international attention in 2002, when he was appointed head conductor of the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra at the young age of 28. For six seasons he has been artistic director and head conductor at Lappeenranta City Orchestra. He is also holding the position of head conductor at the Pécs Philharmonic Orchestra since 2011. Bogányi conducts symphonic, choral, operatic and ballet repertoire with numerous leading orchestras and companies world-wide such as the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Odense Symphony Orchestra, the Durban Philharmonic, the Mexico State Symphony Orchestra, the Macao Symphonic Orchestra, the Sanghai Opera and St. Petersburg’s National Symphony Orchestra. He has also conducted all major Finnish orchestras including the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Finnish Radio Orchestra, Lahti and Tampere Philharmonic Orchestras. In addition, he has shared the stage with some of the world’s leading soloist as Andrej Gavrilov, Ilija Gingolts, Zoltán Kocsis, Gergely Bogányi, Barnabás Kelemen, Kristóf Baráti, Gary Hoffman, Miklós Perényi and Dénes Várjon.
Bogányi has also built up an extensive operatic repertoire. Following his highly successful Finnish debut, conducting Cosi fan tutte for the Finnish National Opera in 2006, he continued conducting a great number of productions, including Verdi’s Traviata andMacbeth, Mozart’s Don Giovanni. During the same period, he also conducted Bizet’s Carmen, Stavinski’s Le Sacre du Printemps and Bartók’s Wooden Prince, The Miraculous Mandarin and the Duke Bluebeards’s castle. In 2014, Bogányi made his Hungarian debut with the National Hungarian Opera conducting the Boito’s Mefistofele followed by Puccini’s Tosca.?He is highly committed to contemporary Finnish music and therefore frequently conducts and records works by Finnish composers like Aulis Sallinen as well as Swedish composers like Anders Hillborg. He conducted Tuomas Kantelinen’s world-premiere opera Paavo Nurmi. He is also devoted to premiering new pieces from other contemporary composers such as György Orbán or Levente Gyöngyösi. In addition, to his work as a conductor, Bogányi has appeared as a cellist in recitals around the world.

Kalle Kanttila is Artist Manager and director of IOA-Management (International Opera Artists), which is one of the most important agencies in Scandinavia and in German speaking countries. IOA has offices in Germany and Finland and thereto in Firenze, St. Petersburg & Paris. Kalle Kanttila was a jury member at many important singing competitions like International “Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition” (Helsinki Qualification), International “Panco Vladigerov” in Bulgaria, International “Lions Singing Competition” by Opera Festival “Gut Immling” etc.
Kalle Kanttila was born in Oulu, Finland. He began his music studies at the Helsinki Conservatory of Music and furthered his studies at the Zürich Conservatory and at Music Department of University Karlsruhe, Germany. He was engaged as Ensemble member at first at the Theater Regensburg and then at the State Opera of Nuremberg. He has appeared as a guest soloist at the Komische Oper Berlin, State Opera Wiesbaden, State Opera Kassel, State Opera Darmstadt, State Opera Meiningen, State Opera Nürnberg, State Opera Karlsruhe, Alexander Theater Helsinki, National Theater Mannheim, Opera Wuppertal, Schwetzingen Music Festival as well at the Savonlinna Opera Festival.

Marin Blažević is theatre and performance studies scholar and dramaturge based in Zagreb, Croatia. As an Associate Professor he teaches theory and history of theatre and drama, performance studies and dramaturgy at the Academy of Drama Arts and opera dramaturgy at the Music Academy (Department of Opera singing), University of Zagreb. In fall 2014 he started his four years term as artistic director and dramaturge of the Opera Company of Croatian National Theater in Rijeka. He is also adjunct associate professor at Columbia University School of the Arts.

Marin published widely in English, Italian, Croatian and Slovenian language. His publications include authored books, collections of essays and edited thematic issues of international journals for performing arts and performance studies. With Matthew Goulish (Goat Island, Every House Has a Door) he co-edited special English issues of Performing Arts Journal Frakcija (Fraction):Reflections on the Process / Performance: A Reading Companion to Goat Island’s ‘When will the September roses bloom?’ (2004/2005). With Lada ?aleFeldman he co-edited MIS-performance issuefor Performance Research. His edited books include: Branko Gavella: Teorija glume – od materijala do li?nosti(Branko Gavella: Theory of Acting – English translation forthcoming in 2015); a collection of essays on Slovenian performance-theatre company Via Negativa titled No, (2011) and MISperformance, Essays on Shifting Perspectives, co-edited with Lada ?ale Feldman (2014). Authored books: Razgovori o novom kazalištu (Conversations on the New Theatre, 2007) and Izboren poraz (A Defeat Won, 2012), on the theory of new theatre and its peculiar history in Croatia. He is currently working on the book The Breadth and Shifts of Dramaturgy (forthcoming in 2016).

In 2011 Marin was awarded the Fulbright Scholar Postdoctoral Grant and conducted a research project titled Dramaturgy: Shifting Concept and Practice at both Columbia University (Theatre – Dramaturgy) and New York University (Performance Studies department). Marin is director and dramaturge of Performance Studies international 2015 dispersed international conference project in fifteen locations around the world: Fluid States: Performances of unknowing (http://www.fluidstates.org)

Vlatka Oršanić, soprano,was born in Zabok, Croatia. She spent her childhood in Varaždin where she began her musical education. She graduated voice study at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana, Slovenia and later took her postgraduate studies in Vienna with Kms Olivera Miljaković.
Vlatka Oršanić made her debut at the age of 20 as Gilda at the National Opera in Ljubljana. Since then, she was invited as a guest singer to all opera theaters in Yugoslavia. In her long and rich career she sang in many projects in different European opera houses and concert halls (Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Czech Republic, Romania) and in Japan, working with prominent directors (Joachim Herz, Harry Kupfer, Christine Mielitz, Pet Halmen, Andreas Homoki, John Cox, Liliana Cavani etc.) and conductors (Semyon Bychkov, Michael Gielen, Wladimir Jurowski, Kiril Petrenko, Daniel Harding, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Heinz Holliger, Stefan Soltesz etc.) Her repertoire includes more than 80 leading opera and concert roles of very different character and music style, from Purcell (Dido), Bach, Händel (Angelica), Mozart (Queen of the night, Susanna, Vittelia, Elettra, Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, Despina), Beethoven, Schumann (Genoveva), Donizetti (Lucia, Adina), Bellini (Elvira), Rossini (Rosina), Verdi (Gilda, Violetta, Aida, Lady Macbeth, Leonora, Abigaila, Amelia), Puccini (Mimi, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Manon Lescaut), Gounod (Marguerite), Tschaikowski( Tatjana), Janacek (Mila, Jenufa, Katja, Malinka ), Dvo?ak (Rusalka, Kneginja), Giordano (Maddalena), R. Strauss (Ariadne, Herodias), Shostakovisch (Katerina Izmajlova), Prokofiev (Nataša) to modern autors. She appeared at renowned European music festivals (Salzburger Sommerfestspiele, Edinburgh Festival, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Wiener Festwochen).
Vlatka Oršanić recorded several CD albums for various international discography companies (Arte Nova, EMI, Sony Classical) and made archival recordings for several radio and TV stations (RTV Ljubljana, RTV Zagreb, ORF Wien, SWF Freiburg, Deutschlands radio, MDR Leipzig. From 2006 to 2010 she was senior lecturer (associate professor) for voice at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana. She is a principal singer at the Slovenian National Theatre Opera, full professor and a Head of Singing Department at the Academy of Music in Zagreb.

Mariano Horak studied singing and musicology at the University in Bratislava and at the Tchaikovsky Music Conservatoryin Kiev.For a few years, after graduation, Horak sang as a baritone in different opera houses in Germany and Switzerland. In 1984 he founded Lyric Department in the “Caecilia” Agency in Zürich, and has been a director there since then. He worked with many great artists including Mirella Freni, Christa Ludwig, Teresa Berganza, Lucia Popp, Peter Schreier, Piero Cappuccilli, Nicolai Ghiaurov, and many more.
Mariano Horak always showed great interest for young artists, he wanted to discover them and with focused and artistic guidance help them to achieve their international carrier. He has discovered many great artists such as Violeta Urmana, Julia Kleiter, Anna Goryacova, Ausrine Stundyte, Stephan Gould, Johan Reuter, Antonio Poli, Goran Juri? and many others.
Horak is often invited to be a jury member or observer in many different international singing competitions to keep in track with the new coming generation of young singers. In June 2015 he opened his own agency named Ammann-Horak Agency which is situated in Zürich.