Nikola Mijailovic

Nikola Mijailovic was born in Belgrade in 1973. After completing the piano section of the “Dr. Vojislav Vuckovic” music school, he enrolled in solo singing studies at the FMU in Belgrade in his mother’s class, ed. prof. Radmile Smiljanic. He continued his education at the Beck Conservatory, where he made his debut at the age of 19 as Count Almaviva in “The Marriage of Figaro” in class KS. Valdemar Kment. After obtaining a diploma in Vienna in 1993, he enrolled in master’s studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which he finished in 1996 in the class of Galina Visnievskaja and Edvard Zambara. During his studies, he studied at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, where Marilyn Horne was the teacher. He was a member of the opera studio of the Paris National Opera Bastille during 1996/1997, and he rounded off his singing education with a diploma from the Academy for the Training of Opera Singers at La Scala in Milan in 1999 in the class of Leila Genzer and Luigi Alva.

Nikola Mijailovic made his professional debut at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow as Sonar in the opera Bohemia in 1996. The same year he appeared as Marcelo opposite Lucan Pavarotti in Philadelphia. From then until today, he has performed around 40 main roles of baritone fame, including Rigoletto, Iago, Eugene Onegin, Count Luna, Enrico, Escamillo, Valentin, Belcore, Macbeth in the leading theaters of Milan, Verona, Lima, Tel Aviv, Dresden, Hanover, Montreal, Havana, Oslo, Paris, Shanghai, Catania, Venice, etc… He had the honor of performing with artists such as Lucano Pavarotti, Jose Cura, Lucia Aliberti, Juan Diego Florez, Rudiero Raimondi, Denia Mazzola Gavaceni, and under the baton of Giuseppe Sinopoli, Riccardo Muti, Leopold Hager, Patrick Furnillier, Nicola Luisotti, Zoltan Pesco and others. In addition to opera performances, Nikola Mijailovic also performed on the concert stage. He performed the cantata Carmina burana several times, from the opening of the concert season of the Sava Center in Belgrade in 1998 and 1999 with Darinka Matic Marovic, through Ravenna with the orchestra of the Kirov Theater from St. Petersburg, Pavia with the choir of Milan’s Scala under the direction of Roberto Gabiani, to Terme di Caracalla in Rome with the choir and orchestra of the Academy of Santa Cecilia. He performed the songs of young travelers by Gustav Mahler in Monte Carlo and with the Belgrade Philharmonic under the direction of Aleksand Markovic. He was a soloist in Rachmaninoff’s Bells with the Verdi Orchestra in Milan under the baton of Mihail Jurovski. He sang Puccini’s Missa Gloria in Lima, Rome and Belgrade, and he also gave solo recitals in Scala with Roberto Negri, in Belgrade with Natas Veljkovic, Aleksandar Serdar and Ljubica Grujic, in Savona with Djovani Redjoli and in Banja Luka with Ana Zoran Brajovic.

He is the winner of the Fifth Lucano Pavarotti International Competition in Philadelphia in 1995, the winner of the first prize at the Mario Lanca Competition in Philadelphia in 1994, the third prize at the Leyla Genzer Competition in Istanbul in 1997, as well as the first prize at the last Music Students’ Competition of the SFRY in Herceg Novi in ​​1992. Since 2003, Nikola Mijailovic has been teaching as a full professor at the Department of Solo Singing at the FMU in Belgrade. He was a member of the jury of the 38th Music Youth Competition in Belgrade in 2008, the Petar Konjovic competition in 2014, as well as the first International Lazar Jovanovic competition in 2004 and 2014 in Belgrade. Mijailović is also the winner of this year’s 52nd Golden Beočug award, and he is also the Artistic Director of the National Theater Opera in Belgrade.