Page 53 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

Yoncheva at Wimbledon 2024 with her husband, Domingo Hindoyan, and Roger Federer
Being a female opera star is like being a courtesan? “Well, obviously we give a different type of

service, but we are often seen in the same way. We are always on duty. We are not allowed to be

human. We cannot have a family. We cannot get sick. We cannot be this or that. We must for

ever play a stereotype, otherwise I see the disappointment in people’s eyes.”

Surprisingly Yoncheva never wanted to be on the stage. “I was a very introverted child,” she

says. “But my mother said, ‘You have no choice. You will be an artist.’ Actually, my mother is
the real diva. When I was first put on the stage, at the age of four or five, it was horrible, I

thought it was the end of the world.”

The horror clearly faded. In her mid-teens Yoncheva was presenting on Bulgarian TV. Her

brother, Marin, also went into showbiz — in fact he and Sonya jointly won a kind of Bulgaria’s

Got Talent TV competition in 2000.

She had piano and voice training, then at 19 went to study singing in Geneva, where she met

Hindoyan. When she was first reviewed by The Times, in 2007, she was part of a showcase for

promising singers of early music put together by William Christie, the baroque specialist. As the