Loris Voltolini – an operatic sailing on the high seas between two Toscas
On Saturday, September 21, a concert dedicated to maestro Loris Voltolini will be held in the foyer of the Croatian National Theatre. Soloists Lana Kos, Ljubomir Puškarić and Stjepan Franetović will perform with the piano accompaniment of Darijan Ivezić. Music critic and close friend of maestro Voltolini Siniša Vuković will present his life and work, and Lidija Suchanek Plantarić will speak about the conductor on behalf of the Orchestra of the HNK Opera in Zagreb and maestro Marko Hribernik, artistic director of the Opera of the SNG Ljubljana.
Maestro Loris Voltolini was born in Split in 1954 and died in Ljubljana in 2021. He completed his piano and conducting studies at the Academy of Music in Zagreb in Igor Gjadrov's class, and began his conducting career at the Croatian National Theater Opera in Split, where he made his debut in 1981 with a performance of Puccini's opera Tosca. One of the leading conductors stayed in the house for ten years. Between 1991 and 1995, Voltolini was the chief conductor of the Zagreb HNK Opera, and he held the same position in Rijeka, at the Ivana pl. theater. Zajc, from 1994 to 1995. He often collaborated with the ensemble of SNG Maribor, and since 1990 he has often been a guest at the Opera of the Slovenian National Theater in Ljubljana. He was a permanent conductor in Ljubljana from 1996 until his death.
Maestro Loris Voltolini's conducting career was placed between two productions of Puccini's opera Tosca. As we have seen, he conducted the first in 1981 in Split (...), and the last in June 2021 in Ljubljana. The path that Voltolini took, sailing through the storms and calm seas of opera scores, is symbolic, because it was Puccini who was his favorite composer. In addition to the Opera House in Ljubljana, in recent years Maestro Loris Voltolini has been supported by SNG Maribor and the CNT in Zagreb Opera. The orchestra of CNT Zagreb even wrote a petition to the Management to invite him for more frequent engagements. And, (...), it was the Zagreb Opera that entrusted maestro Voltolini with conducting the production that was supposed to open the 2021/2022 opera season in Zagreb in mid-October. Entire summer he was preparing Puccini's opera La Rondine (The Swallow), which would be the first staging of that opera in stage costume in Croatia, but his funeral somehow coincided with the date when rehearsals were supposed to start in Zagreb...
Siniša Vuković
