Šimić Vedrana

Vedrana Šimić (soprano) was born in 1979 in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1998 she stated her university education in singing at the Music Academy in Sarajevo in the class of prof. Paša Gackić, and in 2003 she graduated singing at the Music Academy in Zagreb in the class of Prof. Mira Zidarić Orešković. From 2006 till 2009 she was a scholarship holder of the CEE Musiktheater/Deutschebank Vienna. She is a freelance artist.

She had her operatic debut in 2004 singing La chauve-souris and Une pastourelle in Ravel’s L'enfant et les sortileges. During her very active career she performed in Croatian National Theater in Zagreb, Croatian National Theater in Rijeka, Croatian National Theater in Split, and The National Theater in Sarajevo. There she performed the following roles: Adriana in Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, Suor Angelica in Puccini’s Suor Angelica, Mimi in Puccini’s La bohème, Manon in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Amelia in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, Donna Leonora in Verdi’s La forza del destino, Madam Lidoine in Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites, Micaëla in Bizet’s Carmen, Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Tatyana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Djula in Gotovac’s Ero the Joker, Mara in Hatze’s Adel and Mara, Eva in Zajc’s Nikola Šubić Zrinski, Danica in De Sarno’s Balkan empress, 2nd lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, 5th Flowermaiden in Wagner’s Parsifal, Allania in Zanettovich’s Marco Polo, Miss Jessel in Britten's The Turn of the Screw, and Elena in Boito's Mefistofele. She participated in the operatic festival in Brasilia, Brasil in 2013 and 2014, where she performed the role of Tosca in Puccini's Tosca, and participated in the gala concerts performing Salome's final scene from Strauss's opera Salome.

For the role of Madame Lidoine from Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites she was nominated for the Croatian Artist Award in 2007 in the category for exceptional artist achievement for singers under the age of thirty. For the role of Adriana from Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur she received the Croatian Artist Award in 2011 in the category best female role in opera. For the same role she received the ’’Štefanija Lenković’’ award from the Croatian National Theater in Rijeka for the best female role in two seasons. For the roles Donna Leonora from Verdi’s La Forza Destino and Manon from Puccini’s Manon Lescaut she received her second ’’Štefanija Lenković’’ award for best female role in last two seasons.

She has been very active also as a concert soloist and collaborated with Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, Rijeka Philharmonic Orchestra, Symphonic orchestra of the Croatian National Television, Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, Sarajevo Philharmonics, and Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra. As a soloist she performed in Great Britain, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro and Albania under the conduct of prominent conductors such as N. Bareza, I. Lipanović, M. Homen, L. Voltolini, Z. Juranić, K. Arp, N. Matošević, M. Sinkevich, U. Lajovic and others. In the cooperation with the Sarajevo Philharmonics she realized a large number of performances, one of the remarkable ones being the performance at the concert in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna in June 2007. For the Croatian National Television archives, she recorded 15 solo vocal compositions of the Croatian composers Ivana Lang, Ferdo Livadić and Milan Prebanda, accompanied on the piano and by a string orchestra.