Judit Zsovár is a soprano, composer, creative artist and musicologist (PhD); author of the book entitled Anna Maria Strada, Prima Donna of G. F. Handel (Berlin/New York: Peter Lang, 2020). Born in Hungary, she is coming from a family of musicians and started to play the piano at the age of five. Later, she received extended training at the conservatory not only in this instrument, but also in music theory as well as singing. In 2016, she graduated with a Master of Music degree in Musicology at the Liszt Academy Budapest, and earned her doctorate at the same institute in 2017. Judit has presented her research results combined with her singing in cities including Vienna, Salzburg, Graz, Innsbruck, Hamburg, Venice, Helsinki, London, Birmingham, Trondheim, Madrid, Bern, Lugano, Český Krumlov and Budapest.
She studied SINGING with Marek Rzepka (Leipzig/Krakow) as well as coach Stephen Hopkins (Vienna State Opera), and has participated in masterclasses held by Roberta Invernizzi, Katalin Halmai, Júlia Hamari, Krisztina Laki, Malcolm Bilson, Luca Pianca, Vittorio Ghielmi, Marcello Gatti and Margit Legler. She was member of the Erkel Opera Studio (Budapest, 2009-2012), where she sang Mozart and Cimarosa roles. Judit appeared as a soloist at various prestigious venues, such as the Vienna Konzerthaus (Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg under Ivor Bolton), the Helsinki Music Centre, the Händel-Haus Halle, the Handel & Hendrix in London, the ÖGM Vienna, the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, the Mozarteum University Salzburg, the Zagreb Academy of Music, the Budapest Music Center, the Nádor- as well as Liszt Halls (Budapest) and at the Óbudai Társaskör (with the Simplicissimus Ensemble). Her repertoire extends from Renaissance to contemporary music.
Regarding her activity as a COMPOSER, jazz and improvisation projects with Bobby McFerrin and Roger Treece (VOCAbuLarieS tours, 2010-2011) turned her musical thinking around and inspired Judit to develop her own compositional style. She composed (many times to her own poems) art songs, song cycles, chamber music; solo pieces for piano, viola da gamba and French horn; orchestral and choral works, a cantata, a concerto, as well as a full-evening opera (to her own libretto). Her work for mixed choir, a musical setting of her own poem called Speed of Light (2021) is going to be premiered by the World Choir for Peace conducted by Nicol Matt.
As a MUSCOLOGIST, Judit collaborated (2016-2019) to the project of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, on the Viennese Kärntnertortheater’s repertoire reconstruction (1728–1748), led by Dr Andrea Sommer-Mathis, and assisted Dr Reinhard Strohm with the upcoming volume of the Halle Handel Edition’s Scipione. Currently, she is co-editor (2022-) of La sorella amante for the Hasse-Werkausgabe (Hasse Gesellschaft Bergendorf, Germany), as well as member of the WoVen research team (Women, Opera and the Public Stage in Eighteenth-Century Venice). She has published several studies in five languages, inter alia in the Händel-Jahrbuch 62 (2016), the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 94 (2019) and the Studia Musicologica (2018, 2022). Judit held the Handel Institute Research- as well as Conference Awards (2015), and was granted the Zoltán Kodály Scholarship (2015), the German Academic Exchange Service Scholarship (DAAD, 2014), as well as the Scholarship of the Hungarian State (2004/2005).
Furthermore, Judit is an evolving PAINTER: apart from various sold paintings, her still life with Baroque instruments became the cover for Mensa Sonora (2021), album of the Simplicissimus Ensemble, her portrait of G. F. Handel decorated a concert flyer, not to mention that of Anna Maria Strada, appearing on the cover of her own book.
She is also interested in learning and speaking foreign languages such as English (C2), German (C1), Italian (C1), French (B2) and Spanish (B2).
Judit Zsovár 