Sonya Yoncheva’s eagerly awaited new solo album is out! Sonya officially releases her new album “The Courtesan” on her own label SY11 Productions on February 9, 2023. Recorded in 2021 in Genoa, Italy with the Orchestra dell’Opera Carlo Felice Genova led by Marco Armiliato and tenor Charles Castronovo in the duets, all the operatic female protagonists featured on the album are characters associated with the image of the courtesan.

In “The Courtesan”, Sonya Yoncheva unites eternal female figures, some of them historical, who highlight particularly the contradictions and tensions that run through a woman’s personality, between the different roles and images she is expected to fulfil. The album comprises arias from the soprano’s most celebrated roles such as Verdi’s “La traviata”, Puccini’s “La bohème” and “Manon Lescaut”, Giordano’s “Siberia” and Mascagni’s “Iris”. Other titles as Leoncavallo’s “La bohème”, Saint-Saens “Samson et Dalila”, Massenet’s “Manon” and “Thaïs” are not part of the singer’s repertoire or are scheduled as future debut such as Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”. The bonus track “In Trutina” from Orff’s “Carmina Burana” mirrors the philosophy of the project, the balance between body and mind, pleasure, restraint, doubt, and the competition between sentient and rational nature of the human being.

The album has already received rave reviews by numerous major international publications: for Ópera Actual hers is “a voice showing full maturity, with an intoxicating timbre, homogeneous throughout its range and capable of reaching both extremes without problem”; Oper! Das Magazin thus describes her instrument “Sonya Yoncheva’s intense, brightly colored soprano voice, which she uses expressively;”, while Opera affirms that “here’s never a routine or conventional moment and high notes hold no fear for her.” The album has been named “Selection of the month” by Ópera Actual, CD of the month by Oper! Das Magazin and CD tip by radio MDR Klassik.