Biography
Stephen Cviic was born in London to a Croatian father and an English mother. He cut his musical teeth as a boy treble and later as a flautist in Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra. After an English degree and a career in journalism, he resumed where he left off, singing one octave lower, as a tenor. He joined one of London’s top chamber choirs, the Elysian Singers, and then began a solo career, studying with tenor John Upperton and spending two years on the Morley College Opera Performance Course, under the direction of Jonathan Cocker.
His operatic roles include Cavaradossi (Tosca), Don Jose (Carmen), Alfredo (La Traviata), Turiddu (Cavalleria Rusticana), Macduff (Macbeth), the Prince (Rusalka), Tamino (Die Zauberflõte), Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Alfred (Die Fledermaus), Orpheus (Orpheus in the Underworld), Grimoaldo (Rodelinda), Belshazzar (Belshazzar), Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas), Frederic (Pirates of Penzance), Ralph Rackstraw (HMS Pinafore), and he appeared as a stock market trader in the ground-breaking “reality” opera about financial markets, Open Outcry, at the Mansion House in London in 2012.
As an oratorio soloist, he has performed the Verdi and Mozart Requiems, Puccini Messa di Gloria, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Handel Messiah and Judas Maccabeus, JS Bach and CPE Bach Magnificats, Bach Christmas Oratorio, and Tippett Seven Negro Spirituals.
Stephen sings regularly with the Elysian Singers, appearing with them on well-reviewed CDs. He has worked with conductors including Sam Laughton, Jeremy Summerly, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Daniele Gatti and performed at London venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, the Albert Hall, St Martin-in-the-Fields, St John’s Smith Square, and in places as far afield as Prague and Malta.
Stephen’s musical passions go well beyond vocal music, with an abiding love of orchestral and other instrumental repertoire, especially Mahler, Berlioz, Stravinsky, Vaughan-Williams and Tippett, and of Brazilian popular music, having spent three years in Brazil as a journalist. He is a devotee of the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, feeling that opera sometimes needs an injection of Sondheim’s pace and wit. Having worked as a communicator, he is particularly committed to the audience’s experience, and to bringing the music he loves to the largest possible number of people - whether that music is well-known or apparently “difficult”.
Stephen is a talented linguist, fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and Croatian. When not singing, he works as a translator. He is now learning the piano and also enjoys ballroom dancing.
