Martin Tsonev was born in 1973 in the town of Ruse. He studied at the Prof. Veselin Stoyanov National School of Music under Georgi Deliganev and at Prof. Pancho Vladigerov Academy of Music under Blagovesta Karnobatlova. After graduation in 1998 she specialized at the Opera Studio in Graz and at the International Opera Centre in Amsterdam. He made his professional debut in 1996 at the Ruse State Opera as Don Basilio from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Four years later he performed the role of Attila from Verdi’s opera of the eponymous title for the first time in Rotterdam. At the anniversary concert on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Prof. Pancho Vladigerov Academy of Music he took part in the first performance of Monologue by Alexander Tekeliev, under the baton of Ivan Vulpe. This was followed by a recording at the National Radio with Ivan Marinov in 2000.
Already with his first performances Martin Tsonev gained recognition on the European music scene. He performed in Lucia di Lammermoor in Bordeaux and Lisbon, in Attila in Rotterdam, in The Marriage of Figaro and La Boheme in Vienna Volksoper. Since 2002 he has been a soloist at the Bonn Opera, where he has made a remarkably large repertoire. He has performed the central bass roles in the operas Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, Cinderella, Lucia di Lammermoor and Love Potion, Macbeth, The Power of Fate, Il Trovatore, Aida, Rigoletto, Simone Bocanegra, Faust, Eugene Onegin, The Tales of Hoffmann, Lulu.
He has appeared in legendary productions directed by Harry Kupfer with singers of the stature of Johann Kowalski and conductors such as Thomas Hengelbrock. He has also sung at the Amsterdam National Opera (with Robert Lloyd, Pierre Audi, Philippe Rousset) and the Concertgebouw – Amsterdam; he has appeared on the concert podium and performed willingly in chamber and cantata-oratorio works with orchestras such as the Nederland Blazer Ensemble, Combatamento Consort, Nederland Ballet Orchestra, Amsterdam Philharmonic, etc. He has made recordings and participated in performances of the operas Il Trovatore and Nabucco with Olga Romanko, Elisabetta Fiorillo and Ignacio Encinas. In 2006 he was personally invited by the legendary tenor Luigi Alva for the role of Don Giovanni in the National Opera of Peru.
He has made numerous guest appearances at the Opera Berlioz – Montpellier and the Salle Pleyel – Paris as Mephistopheles, Ramfis and others. He took part in the recording of Phaedra by Ignazio Picetti for Radio France, sang in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Nice Opera House and performed repeatedly for Spanish audiences in the Asturias area as Sparafucile, Don Giovanni and the bass part of Verdi’s Requiem. He is a regular guest at many European opera houses and festivals. In 2010 she sang at the legendary Salzburg Festival in Alban Berg’s opera Lulu, directed by Vera Nemirova and featuring Patrizia Pettibon, Franz Grundheber and the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Marc Albrecht. He participated in the March Music Days Festival with the Sofia Soloists Chamber Ensemble and as Don Giovanni in Mozart’s opera of the same name.
In 2012 he performed for the first time in Bulgaria Mozart’s Concert Arias for Bass and Orchestra with the Ruse Philharmonic. On the stage of the National Opera in Sofia, Martin Tsonev made his debut in the role of Wotan from Wagner’s Das Rheingold with director Plamen Kartalov and conductor Pavel Balev. This was followed by Die Walküre and in 2012 Siegfried, invitations and appearances for The Ring of the Nibelungs in Riga, Füssen, Nuremberg and Rome (with Kirill Petrenko) and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (with the Sofia Opera and Ballet). His performance of the part of Wotan in this first in the history of the Balkan Peninsula Wagner’s Tetralogy was enthusiastically acclaimed by Bulgarian audience as well as the Italian and German specialized press.
Martin Tsonev has won first prize at the Tsvetana Dyakovich Chamber Music Competition and has received audience awards at the A.I.M.S Dallas in Graz and the Belvedere in Vienna. In 2012 he won the “ECHO Classic” award for his recording of the opera Ireloe by Franz Schreker, together with the Beethoven Orchestra. For the role of Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni he has been nominated three times by the German music critics as best opera artist, has been nominated for the Golden Faust Award (together with Dietrich Hilsdorf’s production of Handel’s oratorio Jepthah) and has received mentions in numerous articles in Opernglas, Opernwelt, L’Opera, L’europeo, Frankfurter Rundschau and Kölnerrundschau. He has participated in a number of television programmes on BNT, BTV, TV7, ORF, NRD, Mezzo, etc.