Ljubka Biagioni zu Guttenberg (German: Ljubka Biagioni zu Guttenberg), better known as Ljubka Biagioni, is a German baroness, conductor and opera director of Bulgarian-Italian origin. Her full name is Ljubka Biagioni Baroness von und zu Guttenberg.
Biagioni was born on April 16, 1968 in Rome. Her father is an Italian politician, trade union leader and communist, in love with opera. Her mother is Bulgarian, a translator at the Bulgarian embassy and at the Bulgarian Academy of Music “Balkan”. Ljubka Biagioni grew up in Rome, where she graduated from a classical high school. For years she took piano lessons and received a scholarship at the National Academy of Music “Prof. Pancho Vladigerov” in Sofia. She graduated with honors in the specialties “Choral Conducting” in the class of Prof. Georgi Robev and “Orchestra Conducting” with Prof. Vladi Simeonov, specializing with Prof. Vasil Kazandjiev.
After her stay in Sofia, Biagioni studied philosophy in Rome. About this interest of hers, she says: “Without philosophy, I would not be able to understand a single score, because music is not just notes. It is spirit, meaning, emotion, an experience in another dimension.” Along with her studies, she worked as an assistant conductor in many productions, including at Suntory Hall, Tokyo, the Arena di Verona, the Salzburg Music Festival, Genoa, etc.
Her repertoire extends from Mozart, Bellini and Rossini through Verdi and Wagner to Richard Strauss. Later, Lyubka Biagioni also studied theology in Frankfurt am Main.
Lyubka Biagioni continued her musical education in Vienna with Karl Osterreicher, at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Norbert Ballach and Leonard Bernstein, and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena with Ferdinand Leitner and Valery Gergiev.
After winning the Vienna Chamber Orchestra conducting competition in 1996, Biagioni toured Austria with the ensemble, culminating in a performance at the Vienna Konzerthaus. In the same year, she conducted Puccini’s Manon Lescaut in Lucca, Pisa and Viareggio, and performed Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Megaro Mousikis in Athens.
In the 1996/97 concert season, Lübka Biagioni was invited as the first guest conductor to lead the Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana, with whom she gave numerous concerts throughout Italy. In 1997, she gave concerts in Denmark with the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra and also undertook a tour of Greece with the La Camerata Orchestra.
After her marriage in 1997 to the German conductor Enoch zu Guttenberg, with whom she had two sons, she took the name Lübka Biagioni zu Guttenberg.
In 2002, Biagioni zu Guttenberg won the European Union-organized Franco Capuana International Conducting Competition in Spoleto. During the Herrenchiemsee Festival in Bavaria, she conducted a number of operas with semi-staged performances under her own direction and production.
Since the beginning of 2010, Lyubka Biagioni zu Guttenberg has been the first guest conductor of the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Philharmonic Choir, and from 2001 to 2015 she was the full-time conductor of the ensemble.
In 2013, she created the Sofia Symphonic Orchestra, with which she toured in Germany. Its official debut in Sofia was in October 2015 at the Bulgaria Hall – a concert that was part of the farewell tour “A Life In Music” of the world tenor José Carreras.
In 2016, Biagioni zu Guttenberg was awarded a silver medal by the Municipal Parliament of Upper Franconia, Bavaria for her contribution to musical life, and later received a nomination for “The Awakener of Bulgarian Culture Abroad” in the initiative of Radio FM+, supported by the Bulgarian Memory Foundation.
In the fall of 2016, Sofia Symphony Orchestra was a partner on stage with the English violinist Nigel Kennedy during his concerts in Sofia and Plovdiv. In May 2017, the orchestra presented the symphonic concert “Women in Music” for the first time in Bulgaria.
Lübka Biagioni zu Gutenberg’s concert repertoire ranges from Johann Sebastian Bach to Franz Lehár. In the field of opera, her interest is mainly focused on the Italian masters.