Lisa Florentine Schmalz, Boglárka Pecze, Mariana Popova
Biography Lisa Florentine Schmalz, Boglárka Pecze, Mariana Popova
Lisa Florentine Schmalz
is active as a singer, musical theater artist, and curator. Her different activities combine her interest in and search for a form of contemporary and feminine artistic creativity in which content, aesthetics, and working conditions are rethought.
During and after her vocal studies at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater and the Zurich University of the Arts, she performed as a soloist on stages such as the Hamburg State Opera, Theater Kiel, Theater Bremen, and Junge Deutsche Oper Berlin as well as with major orchestras on international stages and festivals such as the Heidelberger Frühling Festival.
As a performer in contemporary musical theater, she has also been seen on stages such as the Thalia Theater, Kampnagel, and Lichthof Theater in Hamburg. Spurred on by her growing need to create and design new structures, Lisa Florentine Schmalz has been increasingly initiating and curating projects. A central part of this is her work in the feminist musical theater collective Staatsoper24, which she founded together with Pauline Jacob. In 2023/24, the co-production Curlew Love Songs took Staatsoper24 and team to the Theater Aachen. This was her first project as co-director.
Lisa Florentine Schmalz has been a scholarship holder of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, the Claussen-Simon-Stiftung, the Musikfonds e.V., and the Akademie Musiktheater heute.
Boglárka Pecze
The internationally sought-after clarinetist and passionate cultural manager Boglárka Pecze has found her calling both in front of and behind the stage. In recent years, the Hungarian has become known as one of the most exciting young virtuosos on her instrument.
She performs at renowned venues and festivals throughout Europe, Asia, and the USA, including the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Salzburg Festival, and the Shanghai International Music Festival. Particularly in the field of new music, Boglárka Pecze has proven herself among the leading international artists with her “brilliant intensity” (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik) and her expressiveness reaching “to the existential limits” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). As a founding member of the award-winning Trio Catch, she has worked with composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Isabel Mundry, and Georges Aperghis, performed as a Rising Star in Europe’s major concert halls, and received awards such as the German Record Critics’ Award and the Berenberg Culture Prize.
Boglárka Pecze also demonstrates the same passion behind the scenes: as a cultural manager, she negotiates fees, calculates cost breakdowns, and serves on competition juries. She currently works as managing director for Ensemble Recherche.
Mariana Popova
At an early age, pianist Mariana Popova’s strong interest in musical dialogue led to her passionate devotion to the fields of piano chamber music and lied accompaniment. Throughout her concert career, she has increasingly linked both aspects and has been one of the first to teach a training class in Vocal Chamber Music at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater (since 2017).
Mariana Popova's concerts have taken her to almost all European countries, Asia, and the USA. She has received invitations to festivals such as the Summit Music Festival in New York, the Aarhus New Music for Strings Festival (Denmark), the Varna Summer (Bulgaria), the Festival des Heures Musicales de Biot (France), the Castello Festival (Spain), the Heidelberger Frühling Festival, and the Schwetzinger SWR Festival.
As a lied accompanist, she has won prizes at the Concours International de Musique de Chambre de Lyon, France, the International Johannes Brahms Competition in Pörtschach, Austria, and the Manhattan International Music Competition in New York, and in 2010 she performed her first recital series, dedicated to the major works of Clara and Robert Schumann.
She has made numerous lied recordings, most recently the CD album Spektrum in 2019 with the Chinese soprano Lini Gong featuring works from the contemporary lied repertoire. Together with the ballet company of John Neumeier, she performed Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes, and with the NDR Vokal ensemble she made her debut in 2021 at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg (ARTE live stream).
