User:Waleran/Hrvoje Banaj



Hrvoje Banaj was born in 1980 in Zagreb (Croatia). He studied organ at the Institute of Church-music, and German Studies and Phonetics at the Faculty of Philosophy, the University of Zagreb. In his degree essay he occupies himself with the frequency of the vibrato, which is one of the most important components of the well-trained operatic voice and it is also the beginning of a much greater research-work. As a student of phonetics he gained acting qualities, especially in the courses: scene-speech, orthophony, orthoepy and expressive phonetics.

He studied solo singing under many internationally well-known vocal coaches: Mario Gjuranec, Hella Seitz-Ritt, Biljana Keserić-Košćal, Sotir Spasevski, Mira Vlahović and others.

Since the year 2001 he has been a honorary co-worker at the city-theatre "Komedija" in Zagreb as a choir member. At the same theatre he had his debut as a soloist in 2004 with superb critics playing the role of Mary Sunshine in "[Chicago (musical)|Chicago – The Musical]" (Ebb/Kander/Fosse).

In the year 2005 followed his operatic debut at the national opera of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, where he sung two roles in Wagner’s opera "Tristan and Isolde": the young seaman (tenor) and the coxswain (baritone). He also worked in the project as an acting assistant of the director and a translator.

In 2006 he entered the project "Grease" in the "Komedija" theatre as an actor in the role of Miss Lynch.

He worked with many famous directors (Jochen Zörner-Erb, Kraft-Eike Wrede, Vlado Štefančić, Ozren Prohić, Dora Ruždjak-Podolski, Igor Barberić) and conductors (Mladen Tarbuk, Veseljko Barešić, Tomislav Uhlik, Josip Šego).

As an actor, organist and singer he performed all over Croatia and in foreign countries: Austria, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Montenegro.

He has a voice of a wide range (D – c2) and can successfully interpret operatic works as well as roles in musicals (the role of Mary Sunshine requires a voice capable of singing very high notes as a2).

Language skills: fluent in reading, writing and speaking in German and English; very good knowledge of Russian and basic knowledge of Italian.

He recently participated in an international project "Theatre in German" in Osijek as an interpreter of a text in a recording for a play.

He also did recordings for national exams as an interpreter of texts in German and he composed compositions for some electronic schoolbooks.