Sunnyboy Dladla

The tenor Sunnyboy Dladla was born in a township in Piet Retief, South Africa, and studied with Sidwill Hartman at the South African College of Music in Cape Town. He began his international career in 2012 as a member of the opera studio of Zurich Opera, where he has since appeared as Arturo in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Conte di Libenskof in Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims, and Paolino in Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto. Additional engagements have taken Dladla to Deutsche Oper in Berlin; the opera houses in Leipzig, Stuttgart, and Cologne; Norske Opera in Oslo; the Rossini Festival in Pesaro; and the Holland Festival, where he performed in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann in June 2018. In addition to the bel canto repertoire of a tenore di grazia, he also draws on his acting talent to take on such comic roles as Basilio and Don Curzio in Mozart’s Figaro, which he sang in a production in Vienna with Marc Minkowski.

July 2018