Biography
Stephen Cviic was born in London to a Croatian father and an English mother. He cut his musical teeth as a boy treble and teenage flautist in Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra. He then took an English degree and had a varied career in journalism, but also found his adult tenor voice and began singing in choirs, including a long association with the Elysian Singers. In 2010, Stephen started having singing lessons with John Upperton and began to head in a more soloistic direction, spending two years on the Morley College Opera Performance Course under the direction of Jonathan Cocker. His operatic career and the development of his voice have since seen him take on everything from Gilbert and Sullivan, to some of the classic roles in the dramatic tenor repertoire.
His operatic roles include Cavaradossi (Tosca), Don Jose (Carmen), Alfredo (La Traviata), Turiddu (Cavalleria Rusticana), Macduff (Macbeth), the Prince (Rusalka), Tamino (Die Zauberflõte), Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Alfred (Die Fledermaus), Orpheus (Orpheus in the Underworld), Grimoaldo (Rodelinda), Belshazzar (Belshazzar), Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas), Frederic (Pirates of Penzance), Ralph Rackstraw (HMS Pinafore), and he appeared as a stock market trader in the ground-breaking “reality” opera about financial markets, Open Outcry, at the Mansion House in London in 2012.
As an oratorio soloist, he has performed the Verdi and Mozart Requiems, Puccini Messa di Gloria, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Handel Messiah and Judas Maccabeus, JS Bach and CPE Bach Magnificats, Bach Christmas Oratorio, and Tippett Seven Negro Spirituals.
Stephen sings regularly with Rose Opera, based in south-west London, taking leading roles in their fully staged productions, and helping to craft and produce the company's series of recitals at Leighton House in Kensington. He also sings regularly with the Elysian Singers, appearing with them on well-reviewed CDs. He has worked with conductors including Sam Laughton, Lewis Gaston, Jeremy Summerly, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Danielle Gatti, and performed at London venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, the Albert Hall, and in places as far afield as Prague and Malta.
Stephen’s musical passions go well beyond vocal music, with an abiding love of orchestral and other instrumental repertoire, especially Mahler, Berlioz, Stravinsky, Vaughan-Williams and Tippett, and of Brazilian popular music, having spent three years in Brazil as a journalist. He is a devotee of the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, feeling that opera sometimes needs an injection of Sondheim’s pace and wit. Having worked as a communicator, he is particularly committed to the audience’s experience, and to bringing the music he loves to the largest possible number of people - whether that music is well-known or apparently “difficult”.
Stephen is a talented linguist, fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and Croatian. When not singing, he works as a translator. He is now learning the piano and also enjoys ballroom dancing.
