On the occasion of the 32nd edition of the Festa della Musica, this year marked in Italy by the theme “The Voice of Places”, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Beirut is organizing a concert featuring opera arias and other Italian vocal works, performed by soprano Nadine Nassar, accompanied on the piano by Maestro Olga Bolun.
“Casta Diva and Luna Mediterranea” is a tribute to Mediterranean places and nights: to their suspended beauty, their mystery, and their unique ability to transform silence into music and memory into song.
For centuries, along the shores of the Mediterranean, in Lebanon as in Italy, the night has been a time of enchantment and contemplation, of nostalgia and love. It is the moment when the sea, the moon, and the human voice seem to speak the same language.
The concert journeys through this poetic universe with some of the most celebrated pages of Italian opera and Neapolitan song. The heroines of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, and Puccini give voice to longing, dreams, seduction, and melancholy, while Neapolitan melodies extend their emotional echo through an intimate, popular, and deeply Mediterranean song tradition.
Performed by Lebanese soprano Nadine Nassar, the program brings together the lyricism of Italian bel canto and the nocturnal sweetness of the Neapolitan tradition in a musical journey filled with lunar light, passion, and memory.
“Casta Diva and Mediterranean Moonlight” celebrates Mediterranean sensibility and that singular emotion born by the sea when the night itself becomes illuminated with poetry.
Biografie:
Nadine Nassar, a Lebanese soprano with a crystal-clear voice, developed her art of lyric singing in Poland. In 2011, she received the highest distinction of Excellence for her postgraduate recital at the Chopin University and, in 2016, the Polish Medal of Honor for Culture. It was in Poland that she refined and fully mastered her voice.
Her career has flourished in Lebanon, Poland, and far beyond, through operas and concerts alongside highly talented musicians. After performing two Mozart operas in Arabic in the United Arab Emirates (Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro) under the baton of the Polish conductor Zbigniew Graca, whom she would meet again ten years later in Beirut for the centenary of the rebirth of Poland in 2018, she added the role of Adina in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore to her Lebanese repertoire.
She performs with the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Lebanese and international conductors such as Manfred Müssauer (for the Beirut version of the Viennese New Year Concert), Harout Fazlian, Jordi Mora (in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony), Joanna Nachef-Medawar, Walid Moussalem, and Lubnan Baalbaki.
She has also appeared in Vienna, at the Alte Rathaus and the Hofburg Chapel, for recitals of Mozart in Arabic; in Paris, for a contemporary music creation with the Lebanese composer Zad Moultaka; as well as in Moscow, London, and Saint Petersburg in 2024, with her colleague, the Lebanese tenor Eliya Francis, accompanied by the conservatory orchestra.
She also collaborates with artists from Central Europe, notably the Polish musicians Jadwiga Kotnowska, flutist, and Anna Sikorzak-Olek, harpist, with whom she formed a Voice and Harp Duo. Together, they have given numerous concerts in Poland, Lebanon, and later in Paris in 2018, and recorded a CD.
Nadine also graduated from the Institute of Scenic and Audiovisual Studies at Saint Joseph University of Beirut. Her acting training also introduced her to the fields of production and event organization.
In 2003 began her long collaboration with the Breton writer Henry Le Bal, around the world premiere in Beirut of the oratorio Les Larmes de Pierre, with music by Rémi Gousseau. The following year, Nadine was invited to sing with organist Olivier Struillou on the island of Ouessant. In 2005, she returned to Beirut for the presentation of The Seven Last Words of Christ. In 2018, she performed again at Quimper Cathedral for the creation of the oratorio Les Saisons de l’Éternité, with music by Michel Boédec. Finally, in 2026, she will appear in Paris and Quimper for the oratorio Untel, with music by Rémi Gousseau.
The late Lebanese pianist Henri Goraieb had chosen her as his musical partner, granting her the rare privilege, for an internationally renowned concert pianist, of accompanying her himself in concert. She credits him with having elevated her beautiful voice to the level of the purest vocal art.
Olga Bolun was born into a family of renowned musicians and educators. From her musical debut at the age of five, studying both harp and piano, she immediately distinguished herself through her remarkable musical talent and exceptional ability to learn.
Olga earned her higher degree in Piano Performance from the State Academy of Music in Chișinău, Moldova, equivalent to a Master’s Degree in Music in the United States.
Before moving to Beirut, pianist Olga Bolun taught and lectured at the National Academy of Music in Bucharest, Romania.
In Lebanon, she has performed an extensive chamber music repertoire in collaboration with leading Lebanese, European, and American artists, under the auspices of the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music and the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra.
Olga Bolun is a regular guest at local and international festivals throughout the region. Alongside her national and international concert career, she is also dedicated to teaching piano.