Biography
Olivera Gočanin is a young and accomplished soprano from Serbia, praised for her expressive stage presence.
She is currently continuing her vocal studies with Prof. Aneta Ilić at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, while also pursuing Italian, Latin, and Greek at the Faculty of Philology. She graduated from the Mokranjac Music High School in Belgrade in 2021 under the tutelage of Prof. Valentina Taškova.
Her professional training began early at the Opera Studio of Opera & Theatre Madlenianum. In 2019, she made her debut with the company, performing the role of Elisetta in Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto and the Second Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte.
In 2021, Olivera was selected for the two-year international project Opera: Past, Present, Perfect!, supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe Programme. Within this project, she performed lead roles in rarely staged and contemporary operas, including Stanka in S. Binički’s At Dawn, Juliet Brook in Britten’s Let’s Make an Opera/The Little Sweep, and the Child in M. Živković’s award-winning opera Nursery.
She has worked closely with several internationally renowned artists through prestigious masterclasses. For years she has returned to Grand Stage International masterclasses of the Metropolitan opera soprano Olga Makarina, Vlad Iftinca, Hugo Mahieux in Belgrade, at Cantofest in Iași, Romania — where she was awarded First Prize — and again in Viseu, Portugal. She also studied at the International Summer Academy at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg with Prof. Michèle Crider, including additional training in diction and Alexander Technique.
She also participated in a masterclass with maestro Srboljub Dinić, General Music Director of the Staatstheater Braunschweig.
In 2022, she debuted in the roles of Micaëla and Frasquita in Bizet’s Carmen during the Pehlivanian Opera Academy in Slovenia, performing the full opera in over ten staged concerts.
In 2024, Olivera joined the Opera Studio in Novi Sad, where she debuted as Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and is preparing a new debut as Adela in Die Fledermaus.
Her vocal and artistic excellence has been recognized with numerous awards, including First Prizes at Corsica Lirica, Cantofest, Rossi Fest Mozart Competition, Nikola Cvejić, Lazar Jovanović, and national competitions such as Serbian Solo Song, Mita Topalović, and the National Singing Competition UMBPS.
Olivera is also an experienced concert performer. In 2022, she gave her first solo recital, opening the Lazar Jovanović International Competition. She has appeared in many of Serbia’s most prestigious venues, including the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad (New Year’s Gala Concert), the National Theatre in Belgrade, the Kolarac Endowment, and the World Music Day Gala at the Trade Union Hall with the RTS Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Srboljub Dinić.
Guided by a love for language, character, and music, Olivera Gočanin brings authenticity and emotional depth to every role she inhabits. As a mother of two daughters, she draws on a rich inner life to shape a career rooted in both personal truth and meaningful artistic connection.