Manuela Ochakovski has been based in the Netherlands since 2002, where she combines her extensive performance background with a thriving teaching career. With over two decades of experience as a soloist, she has appeared in leading opera houses and concert venues, particularly across Germany. Alongside her stage career, teaching has always remained a central part of her professional life.
Following the establishment of her vocal studio, il Portamento, she now dedicates herself fully to vocal instruction and professional coaching, working with both emerging talents and established artists. Her studio enjoys an international reputation, attracting singers not only from the Netherlands but also from Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Canada. Many of her students perform as soloists on prominent national and international stages.
She regularly collaborates with professionals in London and organises an annual international masterclass, partnering with distinguished artists such as Roberta Alexander and Hilary Summers to guide promising singers to the next stage of their development. In 2024, she gave several masterclasses at the International Lied Festival Zeist and has been invited to return in 2025. She has served multiple times on the jury of the International Vocal Competition in ’s-Hertogenbosch and was responsible for a significant part of the initial selection process for the Dutch National Opera Studio in 2024.
Born in Belgium, Waut Koeken studied Art History at the Ghent University and Philosophy at the Universities of Antwerp and Louvain. He trained in a wide range of theatrical professions. His first fullscale production, was an adaptation for children (in French, Dutch and German) of Mozart’s Magic Flute, created for Zomer-Opera-Alden-Biesen, led to invitations by La Monnaie, the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg and the Flanders Opera.
Engagements over the past years included the world premiere of La Strada, an opera based on Fellini’s movie, by the awardwinning Flemish composer Luc Van Hove, for the Flanders Opera, L’Île de Tulipatan and Bataclan (Offenbach) at the Wiener Kammeroper, Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor (Nicolai) at Theater Erfurt; Die Fledermaus (co-produced with the Opera House of Nürnberg and ONR Strasbourg; Barbe-Bleue (Offenbach) for Operazuid Maastricht (NL) and Entführung aus dem Seraïl at ONR-Strasbourg. In the latter opera house Waut Koeken directed awarded production of Offenbach’s La vie Parisienne.
Since 2017/18, Waut is Artistic and General Manager of the Dutch touring opera company Opera Zuid Maastricht. Under his leadership, the company won the ‘Opera of the Year 2018’ award in the Netherlands. In 2020, Waut was awarded the ‘Schaunard Award’ for ‘courage, leadership and inventivity’ in the field of opera during the Corona-crisis.
His internationally applauded La vie parisienne (Offenbach) made for ONR-Strasbourg earned him nominations as “Director of the year” awarded by the magazine Opernwelt (2015).
Born and raised in Tbilisi, Georgian pianist Nino Gvetadze leads an active international music life as a soloist and a chamber musician. Her performances have been praised by many critics throughout the Europe and Asia. Nino received various awards, the most important were the Second Prize, Press Prize and Audience Award at the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition 2008. She became the winner of prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award in 2010.
Nino Gvetadze has performed with many outstanding conductors such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Klaus Mäkelä, Jakub Hrůša and Jaap van Zweden and with orchestras such as the Rotterdam, Brussels, Warsaw, Seoul and Netherlands Philharmonic, Bergische and the Rheinische Philharmonie, Münchner Symphoniker, North Netherlands and Residentie Orchestra amongst others. She toured with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Netherlands Youth Orchestra and Amsterdam Sinfonietta.
Nino Gvetadze is a professor at the Rotterdam Conservatory, The Netherlands. Nino plays on a Steinway Grand Piano, kindly lent to her by the Dutch National Music Instrument Foundation. She is a cofounder and Artistic Director of the Naarden International Piano Festival and Artistic director of the Delft Chamber Music Festival.
Lisenka Heijboer Castañón is a Dutch-Peruvian stage director and theatre maker whose practice is characterized by her search for collaborative process and space for sound. She looks to create work in which there is always a moment for joy, a presence of magic and room for chaos.
In 2023/24 she directed Cavalli’s Erismena at the Juilliard school, created a touring production of Cosi Fan Tutte with the Orchestra of the 18th century and collaborated with Davóne Tines on his song cycle performance MASS for the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam. At the end of this season, she directed John Adams and Peter Sellars’ The Gospel according to the other Mary at the Volksoper and the Wiener Festwochen for which she was awarded the prestigious Götz Friedrich Prize.
As a young artist, Heijboer Castañón directed productions at The Royal Concertgebouw (La Voix Humaine), the Bochumer Symphoniker (Parsifal), and created and produced new work for Carnegie Hall (Through Movement), the NJO Muziekzomer (Over Orpheus), the Grachtenfestival (Vrouwenstemmen) and Opera Zuid (An die Ferne).
Few countertenors have pushed the boundaries of repertoire and sound more than Andrew Watts. A dramatic voice unlike any other and extraordinary stagecraft and presence make him a unique performer not only of parts traditionally associated with the voice type, but also a pioneer of 20th and 21st-century repertoire. He is associated particularly with parts like Edgar in Reiman’s Lear, which he has performed at Staatsoper Hamburg, Opéra national de Paris, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich and Teatro Real Madrid.
As well as singing core roles of the countertenor repertoire, he has performed over 60 world premieres at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Glyndebourne Festival, La Scala, La Fenice, Staatsoper Berlin, Opera de Lyon, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Berliner Philharmoniker, and at the Salzburg, Bregenz, Lucerne, Aldeburgh and Edinburgh International Festivals, as well as the Ruhrtriennale and the BBC Proms. He has created roles in major works by Harrison Birtwistle, Olga Neuwirth, Unsuk Chin, Nuñez, Guarnieri, Raymond Yiu, Michael Finnissey, Judith Weir, Torsten Rasch, Tansy Davies, and Elena Langer.
Having performed Keyframes for a Hippogriff already with the Berlin Philharmonic and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, recent highlights also include Neuwirth’s The Outcast at the Philharmonie de Paris, Prince Go-Go in Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre for Wiener Staatsoper, at the Enescu Festival and with Orchestra national de France, and Lear at Teatro Real Madrid and Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, where he also sang Orlofsky in Barrie Kosky’s new production of Die Fledermaus. Later this season Andrew will make his debut at the Longborough Festival in Avner Dorman’s Wahnfried and performs Olga Neuwirth’s ‘Hommage a Klaus Nomi’ at the Casa da Musica, Porto and a recital at the Wigmore Hall.
Andrew has a busy private studio and is professor of Singing at the Guildhall School or Music and Drame and visiting voice teacher to the International Opera Studio at the Berlin Staatsoper and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
