Conductor Sergey Bogza

Sergey Bogza, has been described as “a charismatic conductor whose passion radiates from the podium” (The Virginian-Pilot), and is known for his unique approach to working with orchestras and engaging audiences on and off the podium. In his third year as the Music Director of the Panama City Symphony, he leads masterworks and holiday concerts, curates a monthly chamber music series, and serves as the Director of Music Education. He made his professional debut with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and the Alabama Ballet in 2024 and has held Music Director positions with the Millikin-Decatur Symphony Orchestra, Willmar Symphony, and Heartland Symphony Orchestra.

Equally comfortable leading productions of opera, ballet, and concert repertoire, Bogza’s energy and artistic integrity are highly regarded by audiences and musicians alike. He has been awarded top prizes at international conducting competitions and is an active composer of symphonic and chamber music. Combining the roles of a conductor and a composer, the premieres of his works are enthusiastically received by audiences and musical ensembles across the United States and Europe.

As a guest conductor, Bogza cultivates a burgeoning international presence that has brought him engagements in the USA and Europe with orchestras, ballet companies, and festivals. He has guest conducted musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, Virginia Beach Symphony, Pazardzhik Symphony Orchestra, Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra, Auburn Symphony Orchestra, Illinois Valley Symphony Orchestra, and Gwinnett Symphony Orchestra. Bogza also served as an assistant conductor for Joffrey Ballet’s 100-year anniversary production of The Rite of Spring, and the University of Minnesota’s Benjamin Britten’s Peace Project, which combined the musical talents of students from North America and Germany, culminating in the critically acclaimed performances of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem in the USA and abroad. For three consecutive summers, he was selected to conduct public concerts of the B-Minor Mass, St. Matthew Passion, and the Christmas Oratorio at the Oregon Bach Festival.

Bogza is responsible for a number of successful collaborations and is regarded for his sensitive approach. In 2017, he engaged an award-winning choreographer, Roger Van Fleteren, to present an abridged version of Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet and the fruitful relationship led to future projects with The Alabama Ballet. That same year, Bogza conducted two sold-out performances of The Moscow Ballet’s The Great Russian Nutcracker, a production that included the company’s professional dancers, 120 community dancers, and a local children’s chorus. In 2018, in collaboration with Millikin University’s School of Theatre and Dance, Bogza led three sold-out performances of The Phantom of the Opera and productions of Pirates of Penzance, Menotti’s The Medium, and Barber’s A Hand of Bridge. At the University of Minnesota, he led the workshop premiere of two operas, Sister Carrie and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Grammy-winning composer Robert Aldridge and assisted with productions of Così fan tutte, Falstaff, and Bartered Bride, among others.

Off the podium, Bogza is an endurance athlete who regularly competes in ultra-marathons and long-distance bike rides. Having won gold medals and finished over a dozen races, his future aspirations include competing for The Triple Crown and Badwater 135. Bogza trains with his two Belgian Malinois dogs, Samson and Stella, and is an avid chef of Slavic cuisine.

Bogza was born in Russia into a Russian-Ukrainian family and emigrated to the United States in 1995. He has earned a Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting from Central Washington University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in orchestral conducting from the University of Minnesota.

Guest Artist Avery Boettcher

This season, Ms. Boettcher makes her Mexican debut reprising the role of Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni with the Sociedad Artistico del Tecnológico in Monterrey Mexico, in a collaborative production with Teatro Grattacielo. She also joins El Paso Opera for the Encores & Overtures Gala as the featured soloist to celebrate the company’s 30th anniversary. Ms. Boettcher will return to perform with the Panama City Symphony Orchestra as the featured soloist for their Bella Notte concert and Viva Italia! Gala. She will then make her debut with Pacific Opera Project, taking on the role of Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, followed by another role and company debut performing Gretel in Hansel & Gretel with Opera Tampa. She will then perform the role of Dot/Marie in Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George with El Paso Opera later in the spring.

The 2022/2023 season saw Ms. Boettcher making her company debut with Vero Beach Opera, reprising the role of Adina in L’elisir d’amore. She then portrayed Violetta Valéry in a concert presentation of La Traviata with Panama City Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Boettcher was invited by the American Friends of the Donizetti Opera Festival to perform in an exclusive masterclass event with tenor extraordinaire Javier Camarena. She also joined the Washington Opera Society at the French Embassy in Washington D.C. to perform a concert of “Opera Classics”. Ms. Boettcher also performed the role of Charlene in John de los Santos’ new work Service Provider with Amelia Island Opera. Later in the season she reprised the role of Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni for her company debut with Gulf Shore Opera.

​In the 2021/22 season, Ms. Boettcher recently enjoyed a successful residency with Palm Beach Opera as a Benenson Young Artist. During her time with PBO she portrayed the roles of Frasquita in Carmen and Belinda in Dido & Aeneas, as well as covering Adina in L’elisir d’Amore and Valencienne in The Merry Widow. For the 2022 summer season, Ms. Boettcher joined the roster of America’s “premier summer opera festival” at Santa Fe Opera as an Apprentice Artist. There she performed the title role in a scene from Rossini’s Armida in the Apprentice Artist Scenes Concert.

In the spring of 2021 Ms. Boettcher joined Opera Theatre of St. Louis for their season as a Gerdine Young Artist. During her time with OTSL she covered acclaimed soprano Patricia Racette in the role of Elle in Francis Poulenc’s riveting one-woman opera, La voix humaine, along with performing an excerpt from La Traviata, singing the role of Violetta Valéry, for the company’s Center Stage Concert.

Ms. Boettcher earned her bachelor’s degree from Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and attended Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music for her master’s degree. During her time at the Jacobs School of Music, Ms. Boettcher studied with world-renowned soprano Carol Vaness, and debuted the roles of Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore.

After concluding her studies in 2019, Ms. Boettcher joined Michigan Opera Theatre (now Detroit Opera) as the company’s resident soprano for the 2019/2020 season. The season opened with a stirring new production of Don Giovanni, in which Ms. Boettcher portrayed the feisty Zerlina – a performance which Opera News regarded Ms. Boettcher as “sweet, bubbly, and a joy to watch.” In the spring of 2020, she performed the role of Lauretta in the double bill of Gianni Schicchi and Michael Ching’s Buoso’s Ghost, praised by Encore Michigan for possessing “a genuine sweetness and perfect tone” in delivering the character’s iconic aria, “O mio babbino caro”.

​In 2020’s summer season, Ms. Boettcher was scheduled to join Opera Theatre of St. Louis as a Gerdine Young Artist where she was to cover the title role in Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah as well as Lily in Tobias Picker’s new opera Awakenings. Regrettably, OTSL canceled their summer season due to COVID19; however, Ms. Boettcher was fortunate to join the other Gerdine Young Artists in a virtual program presented by OTSL which provided intensive individual sessions with renowned teachers and coaches from around the world, as well as publish featured virtual performances through their Front & Center series. After concluding the virtual season with OTSL, Ms. Boettcher traveled to New Hampshire to join Opera North’s Resident Artist Program where she debuted the role of Pamina in their production of Mozart’s beloved opera Die Zauberflöte. In the fall of 2020 she performed the role of Woglinde in Detroit Opera’s innovative adaption of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (Twilight Gods), which the New York Times hailed as “a great triumph”.

​Ms. Boettcher spent two summers with the Aspen Music Festival. She performed John Harbison’s Mirabai Songs and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. with the Aspen Conductors Orchestra, in addition to performing as the featured soloist for the annual AMFS Benefit Gala. On the opera stage, she debuted the role of the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, under the baton of renowned conductor and musicologist Jane Glover, as well as excerpts from Rigoletto, Così fan tutte, La Traviata, and L’Elisir d’Amore in the Aspen Opera Center’s series of Opera Scenes Concerts. She also had the privilege of performing the title role in an excerpt from Massenet’s Manon in an orchestral masterclass concert led by world-famous soprano Renee Fleming.

​On the concert stage, Ms. Boettcher has presented an array of works with orchestras around the world. She has performed contemporary pieces which include Fredrik Sixten’s Requiem and Tarik O’Regan’s Triptych with the Milwaukee Bel Canto Chorus, as well as more classical works such as aforementioned Mahler’s Symphony No.4., a semi-staged concert production of Die Zauberflöte with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra as Zweite Dame, Mozart’s Requiem with the Carmel Symphony, Handel’s Messiah with the Cairo Festival Orchestra in Egypt, and a selection of popular opera arias and ensemble scenes in a concert with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

​Awards & scholarships Ms. Boettcher has received include the Artistic Excellence Fellowship, the Mavis McRae Crow Scholarship, and the Wilfred C. Bain Scholarship from Indiana University, the Helen & Lynton Caldwell Memorial Award and the First Place Prize Career Grant from the National Society of Arts and Letters in their vocal competition. She has also received the third place prize as a Regional Winner in the Central Region of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and the third place prize in the Emerging Professional Division of the International Classical Singer Competition. In 2021, Ms. Boettcher was selected as a semifinalist in the Lotte Lenya Competition, a finalist in the Partners for the Arts Competition, a finalist in the Music International Grand Prix Competition, and the First Place Grand Prize winner in the MIOpera Vocal Competition.

Program

Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky – Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Charles Gounod – Je veux vivre
Giuseppe Verdi – Caro nome
Giacomo Puccini – O mio babbino
Victor Herbert – Art is Calling for Me
Pietro Mascagni – Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana
Gaetano Donizetti – Quel guardo il cavaliere
Antonin Dvorak – Song to the Moon
Franz Lehar – Meine lippen
*Avery Boettcher, soprano*

INTERMISSION

Sergei Prokofiev – Selections from Romeo and Juliet