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Few countertenors have pushed the boundaries of repertoire and sound more than Andrew Watts. A dramatic voice unlike any other and extraordinary stagecraft and presence make him a unique performer not only of parts traditionally associated with the voice type, but also a pioneer of 20th and 21st-century repertoire. He is associated particularly with parts like Edgar in Reiman’s Lear, which he has performed at Staatsoper Hamburg, Opéra national de Paris, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich and which will take him to Teatro Real Madrid next season.
Since August 2023, Andrew Watts has assumed the role of General & Artistic Director of the International Vocal Competition.
Lisenka Heijboer Castañón is a Dutch-Peruvian stage director and theatre maker whose practice is characterized by her search for collaborative process and space for sound. She looks to create work in which there is always a moment for joy, a presence of magic and room for chaos.
In 2023/24 she directed Cavalli’s Erismena at the Juilliard school, created a touring production of Cosi Fan Tutte with the Orchestra of the 18th century and collaborated with Davóne Tines on his song cycle performance MASS for the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam. At the end of this season, she directed John Adams and Peter Sellars’ The Gospel according to the other Mary at the Volksoper and the Wiener Festwochen for which she was awarded the prestigious Götz Friedrich Prize.
As a young artist, Heijboer Castañón directed productions at The Royal Concertgebouw (La Voix Humaine), the Bochumer Symphoniker (Parsifal), and created and produced new work for Carnegie Hall (Through Movement), the NJO Muziekzomer (Over Orpheus), the Grachtenfestival (Vrouwenstemmen) and Opera Zuid (An die Ferne).
Born and raised in Tbilisi, Georgian pianist Nino Gvetadze leads an active international music life as a soloist and a chamber musician. Her performances have been praised by many critics throughout the Europe and Asia. Nino received various awards, the most important were the Second Prize, Press Prize and Audience Award at the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition 2008. She became the winner of prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award in 2010.
Nino Gvetadze has performed with many outstanding conductors such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Klaus Mäkelä, Jakub Hrůša and Jaap van Zweden and with orchestras such as the Rotterdam, Brussels, Warsaw, Seoul and Netherlands Philharmonic, Bergische and the Rheinische Philharmonie, Münchner Symphoniker, North Netherlands and Residentie Orchestra amongst others. She toured with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Netherlands Youth Orchestra and Amsterdam Sinfonietta.
Nino Gvetadze is a professor at the Rotterdam Conservatory, The Netherlands. Nino plays on a Steinway Grand Piano, kindly lent to her by the Dutch National Music Instrument Foundation. She is a cofounder and Artistic Director of the Naarden International Piano Festival and Artistic director of the Delft Chamber Music Festival.
Born in Belgium, Waut Koeken studied Art History at the Ghent University and Philosophy at the Universities of Antwerp and Louvain. He trained in a wide range of theatrical professions. His first fullscale production, was an adaptation for children (in French, Dutch and German) of Mozart’s Magic Flute, created for Zomer-Opera-Alden-Biesen, led to invitations by La Monnaie, the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg and the Flanders Opera.
Engagements over the past years included the world premiere of La Strada, an opera based on Fellini’s movie, by the awardwinning Flemish composer Luc Van Hove, for the Flanders Opera, L’Île de Tulipatan and Bataclan (Offenbach) at the Wiener Kammeroper, Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor (Nicolai) at Theater Erfurt ; Die Fledermaus (co-produced with the Opera House of Nürnberg and ONR Strasbourg ; Barbe-Bleue (Offenbach) for Operazuid Maastricht (NL) and Entführung aus dem Seraïl at ONR-Strasbourg. In the latter opera house Waut Koeken directed awarded production of Offenbach’s La vie Parisienne.
Since 2017/18, Waut is Artistic and General Manager of the Dutch touring opera company Opera Zuid Maastricht. Under his leadership, the company won the ‘Opera of the Year 2018’ award in the Netherlands. In 2020, Waut was awarded the ‘Schaunard Award’ for ‘courage, leadership and inventivity’ in the field of opera during the Corona-crisis.
His internationally applauded La vie parisienne (Offenbach) made for ONR-Strasbourg earned him nominations as “Director of the year” awarded by the magazine Opernwelt (2015).
Soprano Manuela Ochakovski is Romanian by birth. She graduated cum laude from the Music Academy in Iasi (Romania). Following her studies, she was an opera singer at the State Opera of Timisoara (Romania) from 1986 to 1991, where she sang ‘Königin der Nacht’, ‘Gilda’, ‘Olympia’ and ‘Rosina’, among others. During this period, she was frequently invited by the main Romanian symphony orchestras for gala concerts and TV appearances.
Besides her career as a performing musician, Manuela Okhakovsky has been active as a singing teacher since 1986. With her singing studio ‘il Portamento’, she is slowly growing to an international reputation. Apart from the Netherlands, singers from Belgium, England, Switzerland and Canada have also found their way to ‘il Portamento’. A number of them are now working as soloists on (inter)national stages.
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