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The Belgian soprano, Julie Gebhart, was passionate about singing from very early on. After school she would engage in her favourite pastime, playing various characters and singing in her garden. Her musical education also began when she was very young, as her parents introduced her to piano playing at the age of 5. At the age of 16, she began to listen to opera singers, she was impressed and attracted by the beauty of operatic art and from that moment onwards was determined to become an opera singer herself. Soon she assiduously followed the technical and interpretative advice from her teacher Daniel Ottevaere at the Conservatory of Valenciennes – where she received a gold medal for the completion of her studies and a first prize in the category of advancement – as well as at the École Normale de Musique A. Cortot in Paris. She currently keeps perfecting her singing under the tutelage of Olga Toporkova. Her interest in achieving ever finer interpretations and in making increasingly refined stylistic choices motivated her to attend various-master classes, in which she has had the opportunity to study with Renata Scotto, Tom Krause, José Van Dam, Natalie Dessay, Linda Watson, Dietrich Henschel, Francisco Araiza, Bernarda Fink, the opera stage director Tito Capobianco and the conductor Alberto Zedda.
From October 2015 to June 2017, Julie Gebhart has been a member of the International Opera Academy of Gent directed by Guy Joosten, which enabled her to perform in various theaters across Belgium (Concert Hall of Ghent and Antwerp Opera, Alden Biesen castle, etc.) and to incarnate the roles of Eleonora from the opera Prima la musica e poi le parole by Salieri, and Euridice from the opera Orpheus by Georg Philipp Telemann (Bozar in Brussels, Hetpaleis in Antwerp, CCHA in Hasselt, the Minard in Gent, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Waterloo). She also performed as a Zwaantje in the creation Zwanemans, a production held by Guy Joosten in the Vlaamse Opera house of Gent and the Hetpaleis of Antwerp. Since August 2017, she is an artist in residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel where she benefits from the sponsorship of Mr and Mrs Peterbroeck from the Butterfly Foundation and takes regular lessons with José Van Dam and Sophie Koch. There she was offered the role of Pamina in the Magic Flute opera by W.A. Mozart with performances in Belgium and in the Grand Théâtre of Luxembourg.
Both Julie Gebhart's singing and acting talent have received acclaim: after being chosen by the radio Musiq’3 as the artist representing Belgium for the competition Young soloists of the french public medias, she won the prize of the public. At a younger age, she was awarded the second prize in the international Flame Competition in Paris and the first prize in the International Cobelli Lieder Competition in Brescia in Italy, where she was accompanied by her pianist partner, Pablo Matias Becerra.
Recently, The Royal Opera of Wallonia hired Julie Gebhart for the interpretation of Cinderella, in an opera written by Pauline Viardot with 23 performances in 2018 targeting a young public in 4 Belgian cities. Julie’s collaboration with the Royal opera of Wallonia was renewed in october 2019 when she interpreted The Love in the Opera Orphee and Euridyce (Gluck/Berlioz).
Julie Gebhart had the opportunity to perform in famous concert halls: In Flagey she sang W.A. Mozart arias with the Liège Royal Opera Orchestra directed by Giampaolo Misanti and the Requiem of Gabriel Fauré with the orchestra Les Métamorphoses directed by Raphaël Feye; In Bozar she interpreted the soprano solo part of Carmina Burana (Carf Orff) with the Ensemble orchestral from Brussels and the Brussels Choral Society directed by Eric Delson; In UNESCO’s Grand Auditorium in Paris, she performed the first part of a concert by the famous pianist Denis Matsuev; In the Royal Festival Hall Stage in London, she sang the Composition for Mouths by Oliver Beer in a private event; And in many other Halls as the Hofburg concert hall in Vienna; the Théâtre Royal du Parc in Brussels; the Appeldoorn Amphitheatre in the Netherlands ; and the Catamarca Amphitheatre in Argentina.
In 2017, the duo Julie Gebhart and Pablo Matias Becerra was selected to be part of the movie Brussels swings promoted by Flagey and realised by Marie-Jo Lafontaine.
Julie Gebhart has also performed at numerous festivals. These include the festival Eté Mosan with a program dedicated to Enrique Granados; the Juillet Musical de Saint-Hubert and the festival Durbuyssimo where she sang opera duos with the mezzo-soprano Katarina van Droogenbroeck; the festival of Nancy, where she sang an exclusively German repertoire; the Cantus Formus where she interpreted the cycle of contemporary melodies of Jean Louis Mansart (Director of École Normale); the Festival of Vitré, where she sang in duo with the acclaimed Russian baritone Vladimir Chernov; the Coup Opera festival in the Netherlands ; Musicamparts in Egreville in France and the festival Les Minimes in Brussels where she performed Exsultate Jubilate of W.A. Mozart with orchestra under the conduct of Jacques Vanherenthals. |
