Sunnyboy Dladla

Sunnyboy Dladla (born in Piet Retief ) is a South African opera singer with a tenor voice .

Life

Sunnyboy Dladla was born in a township in (Piet Retief) and originally wanted to be a nurse. Encouraged by his schoolmate Pretty Yende , who also comes from Piet Retief, he went to Cape Town and studied with Sidwill Hartman at the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town and already appeared in several operas during his studies. In Cape Town, for example, he sang Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni , Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore , Pong in Turandot and Lysander in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream . In 2009 he made his debut as pong in Verona's Teatro Filarmonico . In 2012 he was engaged for two seasons at the Opera Studio of the Zurich Opera and completed his singing studies with Scot Weir at the Zurich University of the Arts . He also studied at the Lübeck University of Music and completed a master class with Renée Fleming .

Sunnyboy Dladla is a classic lyrical tenor who specializes in Tenore di grazia and is therefore predestined for Belcanto roles by Donizetti and Rossini. Above all, he can show his talent for acting in comical roles such as the Basilio. During his time in Zurich he could be seen and heard as Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor , as Dorvil in La scala di seta , as Paolino in Il matrimonio segreto and as Nick in Puccini's La fanciulla del West . He also appeared in the main house in smaller roles in Zimmermann's The Soldiers and Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk .

The tenor has been guesting on major European stages since 2014. He sang the Conte d'Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Württemberg State Opera in Stuttgart, at the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin , where he also took on the role of Gobin in Puccini's La rondine . The Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro engaged Sunnyboy Dladla in August 2015 as Cavaliere Belfiore in Il viaggio a Reims . He made his debut at the Theater an der Wien in 2015 and at the Leipzig Opera in 2016 with the role of Basilio in Le nozze di Figaro . In the Viennese production with the Musiciens du Louvre under Marc Minkowski , he also took on the role of Don Curzio. In Bucharest he appeared as Don Ramiro in La Cenerentola . He will also sing this role at Opera North in Leeds from February 2017 .

In the concert hall, the singer was engaged for a number of sacred works, but also sings bel canto programs. In 2012 he made his US debut in Handel's Messiah with the National Symphony Orchestra , Washington, conducted by Rolf Beck . In 2013 he sang the tenor solo in Mozart's Requiem with the same orchestra, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach . At the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival he could be heard under Christopher Hogwood in Schumann's Missa sacra . In December 2015 he performed an arias and duet program with works by Mozart, Donizetti and Rossini together with Cecilia Bartoli and the Orchestra La Scintilla in the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels . On March 21, 2016, on the occasion of the South African Human Rights Day , he and his school friend, the soprano Pretty Yende , gave a gala concert in the Cape Town Opera with works of bel canto.