EDUCATION

Dunja Vejzović was born in Zagreb, the daughter of J. Crnković (a UNO expert) and D. Crnković Očko (an architect). After a degree in printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts, she studied and graduated in solo voice at the Music Academy in her native city. She then pursued further studies, in Lied, at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart. Recently, to her many musical activities she has added the study of Conducting.

SINGING CAREER

In her first engagement in the Nuremberg Opera House, she was at once in the casts of great productions and worked with well-known conductors like Hans Neunfels, Hansgünter Heyme and Werner Düggelin. After that came guest appearances away from Nuremberg. After her first performance of Kundry in Parsifal and as Brünnhilde in Die Walküre in Basel, she was invited to sing Kundry in Bayreuth, a role that she took in three festival seasons.

At that time Herbert von Karajan invited Dunja Vejzović to take the parts of Kundry and Ortrud for performances at his Salzburg Easter Festival. For studio recordings in DGG’s Parsifal and EMI’s Lohengrin, she won the Prix Fanny Heldy. Together with Maestro Karajan, she recorded the role of Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer.

Dunja Vejzović has appeared on the stages of almost all the great opera companies: La Scala of Milan, the Metropolitan, Hamburg and Vienna Opera, at premieres and in leading roles. She has worked with such conductors as Carlos Kleiber, Lorin Maazel, Silvain Camberling, Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Lovro von Matačić, George Pretre and Christoph Eschenbach, with whom she has recorded the Death of Cleopatra by Berlioz and Brahms’ Alt Rhapsodie.

She has performed with some of the great names of the opera repertoire; for example, in Hérodiade together with Monserrat Caballé, Jose Careras and Juan Pons; with Jose van Dam in the Le Vaisseau fantôme She has performed very often in her home country Croatia; we might especially mention her parts in Norma with Miro Belamarić and in Nabucco as Abigaille, with Pavle Dešpalj and with Mladen Tarbuk. At a grand concert celebrating the 60^th anniversary of Croatian RadioTV with Nikša Bareza, she sang the final song of Salome. Her stage work with the American director Robert Wilson has been particularly productive: in his remarkable performance of Parsifal in Hamburg and Houston and in Gluck’s Alceste in Stuttgart as well as in Hagoromo at the event Maggio Musicale in Florence.

The scope of her many recitals and concert appearances are testified too by the many live and CD recordings with her permanent duo partner Đorđe Stanetti (piano), Dunja Vejzović Live,  Schubert Die Winterreise and with the guitarist Darko Petrinjak.

EDUCATIONAL CAREER

Being an equal master of both concert singing and the interpretation of the Lied, since 1995 she has been engaged in teaching voice, transferring to the younger generations some of her great artistic experience. In this she places the emphasis on the old belcanto school that she acquired during her work with the legendary Iris Adami Coradetti and Gina Cigna in Italy. She has had a well recieved career as voice teacher at home and abroad at music colleges (Graz 1996/1997, Zagreb 1995/2000 and 2012-2020 as well as at Stuttgart, 2000-2012. Many students who have graduated under Dunja Vejzović have received prizes and gone on directly to appear on the operatic stage and the concert platform.