Mária Porubčinová

Biography

The outstanding young Slovak artist Mária Porubčinová represents the high level of Slovak opera singing. She studied voice at the University of Performing Arts in Bratislava (in the class of Zlatica Livorová) and further honed her skills by attending master classes led by distinguished singers (M. Hajóssyová, N. Kniplová, P. Dvorský).  She has garnered accolades at competitions: the prize for the best performance of  works by Slovak composers at the Mikuláš Schneider-Trnavský International Vocal Competition in Trnava, Slovakia; advancing to the final of the Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition in Vienna, the Concorso Iris Adami Coradetti in Padua, Italy, and the 2008 Montserrat Caballé International Competition inZaragoza, Spain. In 2009 she came third at the Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition in Vienna and received first prize and the audience prize at the Competizione della opera in Dresden. She debuted on stage in 2005 at the Janáček Theatre in Brno, portraying the titular role in Dvořák’s Rusalka. In the 2007/08 season at the State Opera in Banská Bystrica she performed the lead role in Carl Orff’s one-act opera Die Kluge (The Wise Woman) and Sister Angelica in Puccini’s Suor Angelica, which she also sang at the Slovak National Theatre, where she subsequently appeared as Katrena in Jakubisko’s production of Suchoň’s opera The Whirlpool and Mařenka in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (for which she received the Literary Fund Award and was short-listed for the Dosky 2009 prize). In the 2010/11 season she began working for the Staatstheater Braunschweig, where she performed in productions ofA. C. Gomes’s Salvator Rosa and Mascagni’s Isabeau. On a 2010 tour of Cyprus with the Slovak National Theatre she appeared as Mimi in Puccini’s La bohéme. In 2012, Mária Porubčinová and the guitarist B. Bertok and the Hummel String Orchestra released a Christmas CD titled Tichá noc (Silent Night). She has given concerts in the CzechRepublic, Poland, Italy, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and the USA.