Sándor Balla

BIOGRAPHY

Sándor Balla is an established Verdi singer in his homeland Romania. He is a resident artist at the Hungarian Opera Cluj-Napoca and a frequent guest in the Romanian opera houses of Craiova and Iasi, the Romanian National Opera Bucarest and the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest. He has appeared at the International Opera Festival Miskolc and Bartók Plus Opera Festival.

In 2016/17 he performed the title role of Rigoletto at the Landestheater Detmold and returned there to sing Scarpia Tosca in 2017/2018 and 2018/2019. He has performed the baritone solo in Orff's Carmina Burana, Sharpless Madama Butterfly and Le Grand Pretre de Dagon Samson et Dalila with Opera Bergen. He appeared in the title role of Rigoletto at the Lithuanian National Opera in 2022.

His repertoire includes Verdi roles Rigoletto, Di Luna, Falstaff, Renato, Germont, Giacomo in Giovanna d’Arco, Puccini roles Scarpia, Marcello and Sharpless, Donizetti roles Belcore, Malatesta and Enrico Ashton, Alfio Cavalleria Rusticana, Tonio I Pagliacci, Scherasmin Oberon, Méphistophèles La Damnation de Faust, Friedrich in Wagner's Liebesverbot as well as roles in modern operas, such as György Selmeczi’s two operas Bizánc (Byzantium) and Veron.

Sándor Balla has performed in all major concert halls in Romania with a wide repertoire ranging from Mozart’s Requiem and Puccini’s Messa di Gloria to Britten’s War Requiem and Shostakovich’s 13^th symphony. After obtaining a Bachelor’s degree as a clarinetist, he continued his studies in Cluj-Napoca as a singer, graduating in 2004.