This season, the soprano will perform with the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra adding Norma and Elsa to her repertoire.

In a recent interview OperaWire spoke to Jelič about these two new roles, her background in engineering, and how she thinks technology and opera can be work together.

OperaWire: You are making your Palermo debut with the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra in a program that brings together Bellini and Wagner. What does this debut mean to you at this stage of your artistic journey, and what are you hoping to explore through this repertoire?

Marija Jelič: This will be my first time performing Wagner’s music, through Elsa’s aria, alongside excerpts from Bellini’s “Norma.” For me, this represents a very exciting and important step in my artistic journey. Until now, much of my repertoire has been centered around composers such as Puccini, Verdi, Leoncavallo and Mascagni, so approaching Wagner and Bellini opens a new dimension of my voice and my artistic expression. What fascinates me is that, although their musical languages are very different, both composers demand a remarkable depth of expression and a profound connection between the voice, the text and the inner world of the character. I see this concert as an opportunity to explore new colors and possibilities within my voice, but also to challenge myself artistically. Elsa and Norma are very different women, yet both carry an enormous emotional and psychological depth. Entering these worlds, even through selected repertoire, feels like opening a new chapter, one that I am very curious to continue to explore in the future.

OW: Bellini and Wagner represent very different musical worlds. How do you move between bel canto and Wagner’s musical language? What do you discover when you place these two composers side by side?

MJ: Bellini and Wagner may seem to belong to completely different musical universes, but I feel there is a profound philosophical connection between them. They are both searching for something that goes beyond music itself. They are searching for a way to express what is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to express through words alone. Bellini reaches this through the purity of the melodic line. His music seems to suspend time for a moment, allowing emotion to exist almost outside of reality. Wagner approaches the same mystery from another direction: through an uninterrupted musical flow, through drama, myth, longing and the psychological depth of the human being. For me, Bellini is almost like a moment of eternity captured in a breath, while Wagner is the journey toward eternity itself. And perhaps this is where they meet. Both understand that the human voice is not simply an instrument. It is a bridge between the visible and the invisible. That is what makes this program particularly fascinating to me. I am not simply moving from one musical style to another. I am moving between two different ways of approaching the same fundamental question: how can music touch something within us that exists beyond language, beyond time, and perhaps even beyond ourselves?

OW: What connects these two women for you beyond their very different musical languages, and how does Norma illuminate your understanding of Elsa?

MJ: Norma and Elsa are very different women, living in very different worlds, but I find a profound connection between them in their inner lives. Both are women who carry an enormous emotional world within them, and both are confronted with a reality that is larger and more complicated than their personal desires. Norma is a woman of immense strength. She carries responsibility, love, sacrifice and conflict, and her tragedy comes from the fact that these forces exist within her simultaneously. Elsa, on the other hand, is much more vulnerable and almost dreamlike. She is guided by faith, intuition and an inner vision of love, and she is willing to believe in something she cannot fully explain. What connects them for me is precisely this relationship between faith and doubt. Both women have to make a journey inward. They are not simply characters reacting to external circumstances; their real drama happens inside them. In that sense, Norma helps me understand Elsa because Norma reminds me how powerful the inner life of a woman can be when it is placed at the center of the drama. With Elsa, I approach that inner world from a different direction; through fragility, innocence and the courage to believe. For me, singing them is not about comparing two characters, but about discovering two different expressions of the same human search.

OW: Aside from being a soprano, you have a background in electrical engineering. How does the engineer in you influence the way you understand the voice, and music?

MJ: My background in electrical engineering has influenced me much more deeply than I realized when I was younger. I think it has shaped the way I observe, analyze and understand things. As an engineer, I naturally look for structure, relationships and the way different elements work together as one system. As a singer, however, I have learned that the voice cannot be reduced to a system or a formula. There is always something intuitive, emotional and deeply human that cannot be measured. For me, these two worlds actually complement each other. Engineering has taught me to understand the architecture behind things, while music has taught me to listen beyond what can be explained. When I work with my voice, I am aware of the physical and acoustic principles behind it, but at the same time I am searching for something much more intangible: emotion, intention, truth and connection.

OW: Tell me about your interest in the relationship of opera and technology?

MJ: I am so interested in the relationship between technology and opera. I don’t see technology as something that should replace the human being on stage. I see it as a tool that can help us understand more, create new possibilities and perhaps bring the emotional power of opera to people in new ways. For me, the interesting question is always where science and technology end — and where the mystery of art begins.

OW: Where do you believe technology and AI can genuinely contribute to the future of opera without replacing the humanity of the art form?

MJ: I believe technology and AI have the potential to transform opera in many different ways, not by replacing the human being at the center of it, but by expanding the possibilities of what we can create. I think we are only beginning to understand how much technology can change the production of opera. It can introduce completely new tools for scenography, lighting, projection, virtual and immersive environments, and even for the way a director can imagine and construct a theatrical space. This can lead to new languages of directing and storytelling that were simply not possible before. I am also very interested in how technology can influence sound. We can imagine new ways of creating, processing and experiencing sound, and new relationships between the live human voice, acoustic instruments and digital environments. This could eventually lead to new forms of musical expression and perhaps even new genres that exist somewhere between opera, technology and immersive performance.

OW: Where do you see AI in opera?

MJ: AI can become a creative and analytical tool and perhaps help artists explore musical structures, visual concepts, dramaturgy, languages and completely new forms of collaboration. But I think the most important question is not what technology can do. It is what we, as artists, choose to do with it. Opera has always evolved with technology. The orchestra pit, electric lighting, recording, cinema, amplification and digital projection all changed the way opera was produced and experienced. AI is simply another major technological development entering this history. For me, the future is not about choosing between technology and tradition. It is about creating a dialogue between them. The technology can expand possibilities, but the human voice, the human body, emotion and the need to tell a meaningful story should remain at the heart of opera. I would love to see opera become a space where technology does not create more spectacle for the sake of spectacle, but allows us to create deeper experiences.

OW: You have spoken about opera as something that can go beyond spectacle and reach the inner world of the listener. How do we bring opera to the future generations?

MJ: I believe opera needs to come closer to new generations, but I don’t think that means changing its essence in order to make it fashionable. On the contrary, I believe we need to return to the essence of opera and find contemporary ways of revealing it. We live in a visual culture in which younger audiences are surrounded by an enormous amount of information, images and constant stimulation. That is why I believe minimalism can become a very powerful aesthetic language for the future of opera. Not minimalism as a limitation, but minimalism as a way of removing everything that is unnecessary and allowing the essential to become visible.

The human voice, the music, the story, the body, light, space and silence can be extraordinarily powerful when we give them enough room to exist. We don’t always need more scenery, more effects or more visual information. Sometimes one gesture, one light, one voice in an empty space can communicate more than an entire stage filled with effects. I also think this kind of aesthetic can speak naturally to younger generations because it corresponds to a contemporary sensitivity and a desire for authenticity, clarity and experiences that feel intimate rather than overwhelming. But bringing opera closer to young people also means bringing it into dialogue with the world they live in.

For me, the future of opera is not about making opera less profound in order to make it more accessible. It is about making its profoundness more visible.Perhaps we don’t need to add more to opera. Perhaps we need to remove some of what stands between the audience and its essence.

OW: What is next for you after this concert? What are you looking forward to?

MJ: After Palermo, I will be Tosca at Teatr Wielki in Łódź, Poland, and during this season I will also be returning to Aida. I am particularly excited about these roles because I feel that they reflect an important stage in the development of my voice and my artistic identity. I am also looking forward to approaching new repertoire, including roles such as Abigaille in “Nabucco,” which represents another exciting step for me. But when I look at what is ahead, I don’t think only in terms of roles. I am increasingly interested in creating projects that have a meaning beyond the performance itself.

Last season was particularly important for me in that sense. I performed “Suor Angelica” with Opera Carolina, which was a very profound artistic experience for me, and I also sang Liù at the Varna Summer International Music Festival, in a production of “Turandot” in which Saioa Hernández performed the title role. These experiences allowed me to explore very different dimensions of the female voice and the female experience.

At the same time, I began developing a project called “Fear and Faith” together with my pianist Sofia Mazar. Through this project, we explore the music of women composers who lived through the Holocaust and whose voices were, in many cases, silenced or pushed into the margins of history. For me, this is much more than a concert program. It is an attempt to bring these voices back into the present and to ask what music can preserve when history tries to erase individual stories.

So, looking forward, I see my artistic path developing on two parallel levels. One is the natural evolution of my operatic repertoire, with roles such as Tosca, Aida and eventually Abigaille. The other is the creation of artistic projects with a broader purpose. That combination is increasingly becoming the direction I want for my future: to continue growing as an opera singer, while also creating a wider artistic world around the voice.