Soprano

Iwona Sobotka

Career and Achievements

Iwona Sobotka gained international recognition as the Grand Prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Belgium. She has also been honoured with First Prize at the Warsaw Polish Art Song Competition and First Prize at the East & West Artists International Auditions in New York, leading to her debut performance at Carnegie Hall.

Sobotka became a resident artist with the Rubinstein Philharmonic in Poland. She was the featured soloist in four exceptional programs, presenting Strauss’ Vier Letzte Lieder, Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, and making her debut as Isolde in a concert rendition of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Beyond this, she took on the role of featured soloist during the season inauguration concerts for both the Warsaw Philharmonic and the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, alongside other commitments. On the opera stage, Sobotka debuted in the roles of Manon Lescaut, Desdemona in Otello, and Leonora in Il Trovatore. Additionally, she sang as Violetta Valery in La Traviata and the title role of Dvořák’s masterpiece Rusalka, performing across Poland, Spain, Estonia, and Slovakia.

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Iwona Sobotka plays Desdemona in Otello – Teatro Coccia, Novara 2025

The voice immediately stands out for the beauty of its timbre, which is that of a lyric soprano, but full, soft, enveloping and at the same time delicate in its ability to bend sounds into mezzevoci of unusual warmth and bewitching density. In short, she is not the usual Desdemona with a voice bent on an angelic singing with a faded candour, but seems to follow in the footsteps of the Tebaldian tradition, in favour of an opulent timbral impasto that highlights her even when lyricism must unfold on the wings of an intensity that sees her impose herself in the great concertato of the third act, where her voice vibrates and invades the hall, making one perceive vocal emotions of other times.