ILONA BAGELE is a Latvian National Opera and Ballet soloist and is one of the most requested concert performers in Latvia with considerable experience in academic, jazz and pop music. In 1999 she graduated from the J. Vitola Latvian Academy of Music’s vocal faculty as a student of Prof. Regina Frinberga’s class and received her master’s degree in 2003 under Prof. Arvids Imants Lusts’ supervision. In 2000 she won awards at the Jazeps Vitols Vocal Competition.
Ilona Bagele is an associate professor at the University of Daugavpils as well as the musical production vocal consultant for the Daugavpils Theatre.
In 2003 the singer joined the LNOB soloist ensemble. Her wide repertoire includes such roles as Mercédès (Carmen), Ulrica (Un ballo in maschera), Filippyevna (Eugene Onegin), Marcellina (Le nozze di Figaro), Ježibaba (Rusalka), Erda (Das Rheingold), Princess Clarice (The Love for Three Oranges), the Countess (The Queen of Spades), Flora Bervoix (La traviata), Gebgeba the pig (J. Lusens’ The Bird's Opera), Maddalena (Rigoletto), Marthe Schwertlein (Faust), Luzma (The Rose of Turaida) and many others.
Together with the LNOB she has gone on tour to Macau and Hong Kong (China), The Bolshoi Theatre (Moscow), the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Sicily, Bordeaux and Orléans (France), Dalhalla (Sweden), the Tallinn National Opera, Savonlinna (Finland) and other places. She has also performed in productions at the Daugavpils Theatre.
The artist has sung in countless concerts in Latvia and performed solo concerts, including her birthday solo show My Life – Music at the Great Guild in Riga. In 2012 the a concert performance called Cantando y amando with Ilona Bagele as a soloist was recognised with the Grand Award for Music for Year’s Best Production.
Ilona Bagele has performed the alto part in various compositions: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Mozart’s Requiem, Dvořák’s Mass in D major, J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, participated in a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, sung Imants Kalnins’ Rīta Cēliens and many others.
The singer has collaborated with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, the Liepaja Symphony Orchestra, the Latvian Armed Forces Orchestra and many times with the orchestra Rīga. As a soloist she has also sung in many Raimonds Pauls concert programmes.
She has performed in the Riga Opera Festival, the Cesu Music Festival, Inese Galante’s international festival Summertime, the Riga 2014 City of Culture festival, festivals in Poland, Belarus, Finland, Estonia and elsewhere.
