Mezzo-soprano Sonja Runje completed her master’s degree in opera studies with Martina Gojčeta Silić at the University of Zagreb’s Academy of Music. She is currently studying with Eva Blahová in Bratislava.
Her engagements for 2018/19 include not only her Salzburg Festival debut in Porpora’s Polifemo but also Isabella (L’italiana in Algeri) at the Schloss Kirchstetten Festival of Classical Music in Lower Austria, the Abbess (Suor Angelica), Frugola (Il tabarro) and Zita (Gianni Schicchi) at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava and Albina (La donna del lago) and Iviša in Josip Hatze’s Adel and Mara at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. As a concert artist she has recently been heard with the Zagreb Philharmonic and the Croatian Baroque Ensemble among others.
Sonja Runje has already sung numerous operatic roles in Croatia and abroad, including Sesto (La clemenza di Tito), Sméraldine, Princess Linette and Princess Nicolette (L’Amour des trois oranges), the Sorceress (Dido and Aeneas), Prince Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus) and Tolomeo (Giulio Cesare). While still a student, she took part in a number of college productions, appearing as Orfeo (Orfeo ed Euridice), Olga (Eugene Onegin) and Mercédès (Carmen) as well as Maddalena in concert performances of Rigoletto. She also appeared in secondary roles at the Split and Zagreb National Theatres.
Among the works in which Sonja Runje has been heard within the context of her regular appearances as an oratorio and concert singer are Bach’s B minor Mass and the cantatas Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen and Süßer Trost, mein Jesus kömmt, Vivaldi’s Gloria and Stabat Mater, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Handel’s Messiah and Dixit Dominus, Haydns Nelson Mass, Mozart’s Requiem and Missa brevis in B flat major, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Schubert’s Winterreise, Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Saint-Saëns’s Oratorio de Noël, Mahler’s Second Symphony, Duruflé’s Requiem and Boris Papandopulo’s Croatian Mass. The orchestras with which she has sung include the Zagreb Philharmonic, the Zagreb Soloists, the Croatian Baroque Ensemble, the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra and the Montenegro Symphony Orchestra.
