(b Bucharest, Romania, March 10, 1921; d Bucharest, July 6, 1998). Romanian soprano and teacher. She studied at the Bucharest Conservatory (1939–42) with Elena Saghin; in Geneva (1946) with Anna Maria Guglielmetti; and in Vienna (1947) with Kurt Nasor and Josef Krips. Her début performance took place in 1939 with a radio broadcast of lieder by Henri Duparc, Robert Schumann, and Alfred Alessandrescu; her concert stage début took place at the Romanian Atheneum (1941) alongside pianist Nicolae Rădulescu. Her operatic début took place in 1942 at the Romanian Opera in Bucharest, where she sang the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor under the baton of Jean Bobescu. She was a soloist for the Romania Choral Society in Bucharest from 1937 to 1942, after which she became a soloist for the Romanian Opera, becoming the company’s prima donna in 1945, a post she held until ...
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Lana Paćuka
(b Sarajevo, Bosnia, June 30, 1947). Bosnian soprano, opera soloist, and music pedagogue. She graduated in 1973 from the Music Academy Sarajevo (class of Bruna Špiler), where she also took the master’s degree in the field of solo singing in 1977. During her artistic career she achieved notable success singing the main soprano roles in the operas Il trovatore (G. Verdi), Ero s onog svijeta (J. Gotovac), The Bartered Bride (B. Smetana), The Marriage of Figaro (W.A. Mozart), and Madam Butterfly and La Boheme (G. Puccini). Her artistic activity was interrupted due to the wartime events in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995. Her actions were diverted to performances within small artistic ensembles, which corresponded to the conditions of the social and cultural life of that time. She distinguished herself in appearances at the concerts of the Sarajevo Winter Festival, Summer Chamber Music (1993), and Days of Culture of the Czech Republic in Bosnia and Herzegovina (...
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Lana Paćuka
(b Banja Luka, Bosnia, July 25, 1940). Bosnian soprano, opera soloist, and music pedagogue. She completed her elementary and secondary music education in her native town. She began her studies in opera singing at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana (Slovenia), with Julije Beteto. After the second year, she continued her music education in Sarajevo, with Bruna Špiler. The distinctiveness of her talent was recognized early on, and she graduated at the top of her class. She took the master’s degree from the Department of Voice in 1967.
Upon completing her studies, with a Sarajevo Opera scholarship, she made her début in Jenufa (L. Janáček) in 1965. From that moment on, she was engaged as a soloist at the Sarajevo Opera and, from 1965 to 1968, sang the roles of Abigaille (Nabucco, G. Verdi), Katerina Ismailova (Katerina Ismailova, D. Shostakovich), and Floramye (Little Floramye, I. Tijardović). In ...