The Vocal Olympics Arrive in Israel with Sopranista Maayan Licht

Rejoice: for as the year draws to a close, the Farinelli of our time is coming to visit.
A real one. Properly titled and officially recognized. His name is Maayan Licht, addressed variously as a sopranista, a male soprano, a countertenor-who-staunchly-refuses-to-be-called-a-countertenor.

Maayan Licht is Israeli by birth, though he has long lived in Europe—where else, after all, could a sopranista find a stage? He’s been hailed as the modern Farinelli because he sings roles no one else today can manage. His larynx has an almost unbelievable agility; he tosses off every embellishment—mordents, trills, gruppetti, you name it. What sets him apart from other sopranistas is the sheer naturalness of it all: nothing feels manufactured or over-schooled. The voice seems to come from some earlier century, as if he really had slipped through time.

            Alessandro nell'Indie, Margravial Opera House (title role) 2022
                                Photo by Clemens Manser

Licht is also the winner of Oper!’s Best Newcomer Award (2025). This season he debuts at Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, at the storied Theater an der Wien in Vienna, and in The Coronation of Poppea at the Monteverdi Festival.

And then there are his experimental projects—the ones that question the very notion of “canon.” For Licht, opera is no longer a synonym for eternal classicism reserved for aesthetes; it is a space where music, gender, form, style, and era can all be reimagined. As he puts it, the voice can survive and evolve by adapting to new contexts while remaining faithful to its roots—its technique, its expressive truth, its emotional honesty.

Among these projects is the queer opera CarMEN at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, which essentially exposed opera’s own inner wiring, stripping away its old skin of tradition and revealing an art form that is very much alive—bodily, funny, provocative, erotic, and tender all at once.
And, of course, there is Technopera—Licht’s long-running venture fusing operatic and Baroque/classical vocal aesthetics with electronic and techno elements. The result is a bold contemporary vibration that binds Baroque and techno as though the two had always been whispering to each other in secret.

Here’s what Maayan Licht told us about the upcoming concerts with the Israel Camerata:

“The program of this evening is devoted to the beautiful and deeply moving music of the Baroque—music often described as a ‘vocal Olympics,’ a true test of the voice. Many of the arias on the program were originally written for the great castrati of the 18th century, who sang male roles in high voices and dazzled audiences with their virtuosity and power. At the same time, the female singers of that era performed equally breathtaking roles, shaping the world of Baroque opera.

Today, as a male soprano, I touch both worlds: I sing the male roles written for the castrati and the female roles written for singers. My voice allows me to combine femininity and masculinity, and in this music gender simply ceases to matter—what counts is artistic expression and the emotional force the voice carries.

The orchestral works by Handel, Corelli, and Bach create a rich, expansive foundation for the arias and open up the vivid sonic world of the early 18th century. Taken together, the pieces on this program offer listeners dizzying virtuosity and emotional depth—jealousy, longing, joy, and hope. Exactly what the composers themselves wanted their audiences to feel three hundred years ago.”

                      Maayan Licht. Photo by Nelya Agdeeva

The Israel Camerata’s program under Avner Biron, with Matan Dagan (violinist & concertmaster), is aptly titled “Soprano senza Maschera.” This wonderfully strange program offers arias by Handel, Vivaldi, Corelli, Giacomelli, and others from rarely performed operas such as Agrippina, Ottone in Villa, Merope, and Xerxes—and plenty more that is rarely seen, unheard, and thoroughly astonishing.

Concert Schedule:
24 Dec 2025 — YMCA, Jerusalem
25 Dec 2025 — Elma Arts Center, Zichron Ya’akov
26 Dec 2025 — Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Recanati Hall
28 Dec 2025 — Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Michael Sela Auditorium

Tickets available here.