“Mirella Toić is one of the most musical singers, her voice one of the most beautiful ones that you can hear nowadays. What enabled her to achieve the performances to be remembered are her rich and warm homogenous lirico-spinto soprano of a beautiful colour, brilliant heights, sumptuous sonority, ethereal pianos and a great agility, enabling her to master with ease virtuoso coloratura fineries by an impeccable legato, a belcanto phrase in a wide swing, a marked musicality and developed singing technique, also a totally sincere and profound human quality…”
These are the words that the prominent musicologist Marija Barbieri has written on the years-long soloist of the Rijeka Opera, as well as the principal national soloist Mirella Katarinčić Toić, who, retiring after a long and successful career, is giving her farewell concert on 20th June 2018, beginning at 19:30 hours at the CNT Ivan pl. Zajc.
This will be an opportunity to remind ourselves of the great roles and well-known arias that the Rijeka prima donna and artist of international reputation has performed so supremely in the last forty years!
The concert will be conducted by Maestro Igor Vlajnić, while, beside the Rijeka Opera Orchestra, she will also be joined by her guests, colleagues and soloists of the Rijeka Opera ensemble, that is, Vanja Zelčić, Davor Lešić, Robert Kolar and Slavko Sekulić.
The works that she has chosen to perform belong to the roles with which she marked the Rijeka stage as well as other operatic ones. Thus, we will be able to listen to the most beautiful arias of Bellini’s Norma, Verdi’s Amelia from Un Ballo in Maschera and Elisabetta from Don Carlos, Puccini’s Tosca, but also to arias from Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman, Ponchielli’ Gioconda, Verdi’s Rigoletto and Strauss’ The Bat in the performance of her guests.
She has been engaged with the CNT Opera, formerly under the name of the National Theatre Ivan Zajc, since the year 1979 (with a three-year break when she was engaged by the German theatres Vereinghte Städtische Bühnen Krefeld and Mönchengladbach). Her attainments and successes have marked and permanently enriched the Croatian culture. According to Croatian music critics, she is the best Croatian Verdi singer and an outstanding world operatic artist. Her career can boast of supremely interpreted characters, numerous excellent concerts, important awards and a successful teaching work.
Mirella Katarinčić Toić won the City of Rijeka Award, the Milka Trnina Award and the Croatian Theatre Award for the role of Norma in Bellini’s opera. She was also honoured with the Decoration for Merits in Culture, the Order of Danica Hrvatska with the image of Marko Marulić and received the prestigious Vladimir Nazor Award for the role of Elisabetta in Verdi’s Don Carlos and that of Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera.
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