L'AMOUR – RAISON D’ETRE
(Love – The Purpose of Life)

Dušica Bijelić, Soprano
Višnja Radosav, Mezzo-soprano
Dejan Maksimović, Tenor
Ugo Rabec, Bass
Dario Humenjuk, Piano
Stage direction: Aleksandar Nikolić

Léo Delibes (1810-1857)
“Les filles de Cadix”, song (D. Bijelić)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Leporello’s aria “Madamina, il catalogo è questo” from the opera Don Giovanni (U. Rabec)
Duet of Don Giovanni and Zerlina “Là ci darem la mano” from the opera Don Giovanni (D. Bijelić, U. Rabec)

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
“Non t’accostare all’urna”, romance (D. Maksimović)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Terzetto of Fiordiligi, Dorabella and Don Alfonso “Soave sia il vento…” from the opera Così fan tutte (D. Bijelić, V. Radosav, U. Rabec)

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)
Nemorino’s aria “Una furtiva lagrima” from the opera L’elisir d’amore (D. Maksimović)
Duet of Adina and Nemorino “Una parola, o Adina…” from the opera L’elisir d’amore (D. Bijelić, D. Maksimović)

Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835)
Giulietta’s aria “Eccomi in lieta vesta…” from the opera I Capuleti e i Montecchi (D. Bijelić)

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
Hérode’s aria “Ô misère des Rois” from the oratorio L’enfance du Christ (U. Rabec)

Gaetano Donizetti
Leonora’s aria “O, mio Fernando…” from the opera La favorita (V. Radosav)

Jules Massenet (1842-1912)
Werther’s aria “Pourquoi me réveiller” from the opera Werther (D. Maksimović)

Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
Carmen’s aria “Près des remparts de Séville” (Seguidilla) from the opera Carmen (V. Radosav)
Duet of Escamillo and Carmen “Si tu m’aimes, Carmen” from the opera Carmen (U. Rabec, V. Radosav)
Don José’s aria “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée” from the opera Carmen (D. Maksimović)

Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)
Duet “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour” (“Barcarolle”) from the opera Les contes d’Hoffmann (D. Bijelić, V. Radosav)

Dušica Bijelić possesses a wonderful voice and a magnetic presence on stage having gained a remarkable list of followers in her time at the Royal Opera House. She joined the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House in London in September 2012. She made her Royal Opera debut in December the same year as Lady-in-Waiting in Laurent Pelly’s version of Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable. She has since performed on the main stage in Nabucco, Don Carlo, La Rondine, Parsifal, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Le Nozze di Figaro covering the role of Blanche in Robert Carsen’s Dialogues des Carmelites under Simon Rattle. She also covered at the Royal Opera House the roles of Tatiana in Eugene Onegin, Lisette in La Rondine, Micaela in Carmen and Marguerite in Faust. In 2013 she was invited by the Royal Ballet to their tour galas in Brazil.
Alongside operatic roles at Teatro Real, Madrid, and the Wildbad Rossini Festival, Bijelić has performed widely in concert and recitals in Europe, the United States and Japan. Her awards include winning the Career Bridges Competition in New York, the Audience Prize at the Wildbad Rossini Festival and First Prize in the Nikola Cvejić International Singing Competition in Serbia.
Bijelić studied piano and singing from the age of 8. She studied singing at the University of Fine Arts in Belgrade under Ljudmila Gross-Popović. She continued her studies at Vienna University of Music, Opera Studio of Santa Cecilia in Rome and Bard College Music Conservatory in the US. She has also received full scholarships to attend the Daniel Ferro Vocal Programme in Tuscany for five summers.
British magazine The Independent selected Dušica Bijelić as one of the “top eight Bright Young Things in the arts in 2014”.

Višnja Radosav was born in Zrenjanin. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, where she studied with Vesna Opsenica. She completed specialist studies at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade in the class of Nikola Mijailović. She was a member of the Opera studio of the National Theatre in Belgrade, where she made her debut as Fenena (Verdi, Nabucco) and Suzuki (Puccini, Madama Butterfly). In 2016 she debuted at the Macedonian Opera and Ballet in Skopje in the role of Maddalena (Verdi, Rigoletto).
As a soloist she performed in Verdi’s Messa da Requiem on the occasion of the Centenary of the genocide of Armenian people, within the frames of the Opera Festival in Yerevan, Armenia. She received a scholarship of the International Vocal Arts Institute in New York in 2016.
She took part in master classes of renowned artists such as Rolando Nicolosi, Marijana Mijanović, Jennifer Larmore, Đorđe Nešić, Darina Takova, Lyubov Kazarnovskaya, Luciana d’Intino, Roberto Scandiuzzi, Anka Sommer, etc.
During her studies she received numerous awards in Serbia. She has performed extensively in the country and abroad.

Tenor Dejan Maksimović graduated from the Faculty of Music in Belgrade where he studied with primadonna Radmila Bakočević. He completed further studies at the Conservatory Giuseppe Tartini in Trieste in the class of Rita Susovsky. He had his opera debut as a student in the title role of W. A. Mozart's Bastien und Bastienne. During the studies he was a member of the Opera Studio of the National Theatre in Belgrade. So far he has sung the roles of Tamino (Die Zauberflöte), Lenski (Eugene Onegin), The Duke (Rigoletto), Rodolfo (La bohème), Faust, Werther, Nemorino (L’elisir d’amore), Alfredo (La Traviata), Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor) Erik (Der fliegende Holländer), Cavaradossi (Tosca), Don José (Carmen) and many more. As a soloist he performed with the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra, Rheinische Philharmonie, Orchestra sinfonica di Roma, and symphony orchestras of Serbian and Slovenian Radio and Television. He was a guest soloist of the opera houses in Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Koblenz and Constanţa, as well as of the Opera and Theatre Madlenianum in Belgrade. He has performed in Hungary, Greece, China, Italy, Danmark, Slovenia, Romania, and in the SEE region. He is a commited interprete of Lied, having performed integral song cycles such as Die Schöne Müllerin (Schubert), Dichterliebe (Schumann), Liebeslieder (Brahms), as well as recital programmes of Italian, French, Spanish and Russian songs.

Franco-Italian Bass, Ugo Rabec started studying violin at age four. He began to study singing with Elena Vassilieva in 2000 and was a member of Atelier Lyrique at the Paris Opera from 2005 to 2008. In 2007, he received the lyrical awards from Cercle Carpeaux and AROP 2006-2007. He was selected for the Academy of Verbier Festival in 2008. He followed the master classes of Claudio Desderi, Barbara Bonney, Angelika Kirchschlager, Guillemette Laurens, Raúl Giménez.
He interprets the French, Italian, German and Slavic repertoire of “Noble Bass”. He has already incarnated on stage the roles of Don Alfonso (Così fan tutte) at Rennes Opera, Alidoro  (Cenerentola) at Wildbad Festival, Collatinus (The rape of Lucretia) at Paris Athénée Theatre, Il commissario Imperiale (Madama Butterfly) at Bastille Opera, Barlow (Le Maudit des Mers) at Vienna Konzerthaus, Pluton (Hippolyte et Aricie) at Palais Garnier, Commendatore (Don Giovanni) at Bobigny Theatre, Monterone, Rigoletto at Rennes Opera, Il Frate (Don Carlo) at Bilbao, Le Bailli (Werther) at Trieste. He will be singing Alessio (Sonnambula) at TCE Paris, First Nazarene (Salome) at Strasbourg, Il Bonzo (Madama Butterfly) at Limoges...
He has already been welcomed by houses such as Opera Bastille, Palais Garnier, Opera Comique and Salle Pleyel in Paris, Vienna Konzerthaus, London, Versailles, Strasbourg, Rennes, Nantes, Montpellier, Metz, Mulhouse, Verbier and Wildbad Festival ...
He worked with well-acclaimed music directors such as: Daniel Oren, Valery Gergiev, Philippe Jordan, Marc Minkowski, Vasily Petrenko, Evelino Pido, Pinchas Steinberg, Jeffrey Tate, Carlo Rizzi, Alain Altinoglu, Michael Schønwandt, Paavo Järvi ... And he was directed by Robert Carsen, Olivier Py, Willy Decker, Keith Warner, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Robert Wilson, Coline Serreau, André Engel, Lev Dodine, Gilbert Deflo...

Dario Humenjuk (1979) began his studies of piano in his hometown of Banja Luka in the School of Music “Vlado Milošević”. He then completed the School of Music “Josip Slavenski” i Belgrade where he studied with Zorica Stupar Berbić. He graduated from the Piano Department of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad in the class of Dorian Leljak. He took part in a number of master classes by renowned pianists such as Kemal Gekić, Arbo Valdma, Jacques Rouvier, Vladimir Ogarkov, Svetlana Bogino, Ninoslav Živković and Rita Kinka.
Since 2005 Dario Humenjuk has worked as a chamber music teacher and piano accompanist at the School of Music “Davorin Jenko” in Belgrade. He was a collaborator of several renowned national and international music competitions and festivals. He made recordings for the Radio-Television of Serbia, Radio-Television of the Republic of Srpska and Rai Uno (Italy).
As a chamber music performer he has established a fruitful collaboration with well known vocal and instrumental soloists. He has performed as a soloist, chamber musician and piano accompanist in Austria, Italy, Greece, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
Dario Humenjuk obtained his PhD degree from the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, Department of Chamber Music in 2015 in the class of Ljudmila Gross Popović.

Аleksandar Nikolić graduated from the Theatre and Radio Directing Department at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and he currently attends doctoral studies at the Audio-Visual Arts Department of the same Faculty in the class of Svetozar Rapajić. Aleksandar Nikolić studied History of Arts (Faculty of Philosophy) and Industrial Design (Belgrade Polytechnic College). He attended advanced training courses in Brescia (Italy), Hanover (Germany) and Thessaloniki (Greece).
Since 2009/10 season he has worked as an associate of the Opera of the National Theatre in Belgrade on maintaining and renewal of the repertoire: The Love for Three Oranges, Lucia di Lammermoor, Il Nozze di Figaro, Carmen, Adriana Lecouvreur, Un ballo in maschera …
Since 2015/16 academic year he has worked as an assistant professor of Opera Directing and Ballet Directing at the Belgrade Institute for Artistic Dance.
So far he has directed plays at the National Theatre in Belgrade, Opera and Theatre Madlenianum in Belgrade, Filodrammatica Theatre in Rijeka and Dom omladine Beograda (Belgrade Youth Center), including the world premiere of the opera The Melancholic Dreams of Count Sava Vladislavić by the contemporary Serbian composer Svetislav Božić.