Viliana Valtcheva

VILIANA VALTCHEVA (1980) is one of today’s most prominent young Bulgarian conductors. She received her secondary education at the Dobri Hristov National School of Arts in her hometown of Varna, specializing in piano. She then continued her studies in Switzerland at the Hochschule der Künste in Bern, graduating from the piano department in 2001. She went on to complete further training at the Music Conservatory in Neuchâtel, specializing in piano accompaniment (2004), and at the Lucerne University of Music, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in opera and symphony conducting, music, and bassoon under Prof. Turing Brem, Prof. Achim Fiedler, and Prof. Beat Bletler (2008). In 2011, she also graduated as a musicologist from the University of Bern. Valtcheva completed her master’s degree with distinction in opera and symphony conducting at the Lucerne University of Music in the class of Prof. Ralph Weikert, long-time chief conductor of the Zurich Opera. She subsequently attended master classes with renowned conductors such as Bernard Haitink, David Zinman, Zubin Mehta, and Pierre Boulez. Between 2004 and 2014, she conducted a wide range of international ensembles, including the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Haydn Sinfonietta (Vienna), the Faenza Philharmonic Orchestra (Italy), the Hochdorf Orchestra (Lucerne), the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra (South Africa), the Bern Concert Orchestra, among others. During this period, she also worked as a répétiteur and assistant at the Wagner Festival in Wels (Austria). From 2008 to 2014, she was awarded two prestigious scholarships: the Zeno-Karl Schindler Scholarship (Geneva) for medieval German music, and the Richard Wagner-Stiftung Bayreuth Scholarship, which supported her studies of Richard Wagner’s works. Viliana Valtcheva is a finalist in the renowned International Conducting Competition in Cadaqués (Spain) and an active participant in the Berlin forum Das Kritische Orchester, formed by musicians from Germany’s most prestigious ensembles, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, the Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra, and the Dresden Kapelle. In 2013, she began working at the Lucerne Opera House as a rehearsal coach and assistant to the principal conductor, where she was engaged for three active seasons. That same year, she collaborated on a new production at the Zurich Opera House with principal conductor Fabio Luisi. In 2014, at the invitation of Borislav Ivanov, then artistic consultant of the Varna Opera, Valtcheva joined the company as a staff conductor. There she staged new productions of Giordano’s André Chénier, Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, Bellini’s Norma, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, among many others. In January 2018, Viliana Valtcheva made her debut at the Francesco Cilea Theater in Reggio Calabria (Italy) with Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem. Later that year, she staged Bellini’s opera Norma to great acclaim. Valtcheva has also conducted successfully at the Plovdiv Opera, Biel/Solothurn (Switzerland), and is a member of the Knobelsdorff Ensemble at the Staatskapelle Berlin. Since 2021, she has served as a staff conductor at the State Opera in Ruse, and in January 2022 she made her debut with the Sofia Philharmonic. In July 2022, at the invitation of the renowned Argentine tenor and conductor José Cura, she took part in the first edition of the Paleshak Festival in Orebić (Croatia). During the 2023/2024 season, Viliana Valtcheva conducted the enthusiastically received Bulgarian premiere of the musical The Addams Family as part of the Opera Open festival in Plovdiv, and appeared at the Symfonia Umenia summer festival in Bratislava with the Staatskapelle Berlin ensemble. In 2023 and 2024, she was once again invited by the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra for concerts with world‑renowned instrumentalists, including Japanese violinist Midori and cellist Anastasia Kobekina, with whom she performed works by Bernstein, Palmeri, Dobrinka Tabakova, Tchaikovsky, and Schumann. In May 2024, she will serve as a member of the jury at the prestigious Dimitri Mitropoulos Conducting Competition in Thessaloniki. In that year, she received a certificate from the Minister of Culture in recognition of her outstanding creative achievements and contribution to Bulgarian culture. In 2025, Viliana Valtcheva made her debut with the Zagreb Chamber Orchestra, performing works by both Bulgarian and Croatian composers. She conducted Gheorghi Arnaudov’s contemporary monodrama Notes of the Ghost Woman at the Sofia Music Weeks International Festival. At the tenth‑anniversary edition of the Opera on the Heights Festival in Belogradchik, she presented the State Opera–Ruse in five opera productions. Looking ahead to 2026, Valtcheva has new engagements planned with the Sofia Philharmonic, including a concert with Norwegian trumpeter Tine Ting Helset as soloist and participation in the Fortissimo program.