PAUL HUNKA BIO

Date and Place of Birth:  Apr. 7, 1959, Coventry, U.K.  
Mother: Irene Powell, May 27, 1926, Coventry U.K.
Father: Wasyl Hunka, Apr.1, 1924, Muzhyliv, Ukraine

Internationally acclaimed opera singer Pavlo Hunka was born in England to a Ukrainian father and an English mother. Pavlo’s father, Wasyl Hunka, was born in Western Ukraine, and in 1941, at the age of 17, was taken to Germany by the Nazis as forced labor.  Not able to see his family as promised, Wasyl escaped and was arrested in Poland and taken to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp north of Berlin. He spent 20 months there until the end of the war. Upon his release he became part of the Polish Army and was demobilized in 1946. Eventually, he arrived in the U.K. where he was recruited to work at the Jaguar car factory in Coventry. There he met his wife, Irene Powell. Not able to have a successful career himself, Wasyl’s dream for his sons was to become lawyers.

Pavlo Hunka qualified as a linguist (B.A. in French and Spanish) and practised as a lawyer in the U.K. before embarking on a singing career. He began his vocal studies at Manchester's Royal Northern College of Music and completed them in Switzerland with Kammersängerin Maria Sandulescu. He sang many of the major roles in the bass-baritone repertoire while on contract to the Basel Opera Company in Switzerland. Since then, he has sung in most of the world’s leading opera houses - Paris, Vienna, Munich, Florence, Amsterdam, London, Salzburg, with conductors Claudio Abbado, Jeffrey Tate, Symyon Bychkov, Zubin Mehta, Peter Schneider, Richard Bradshaw, Sir Simon Rattle, Daniel Barenboim and Mark Wigglesworth.

2016 marked Pavlo’s premiere performance in Ukraine, with an Art Song recital at the National Philharmonic in Kyiv and another at the Lviv Philharmonic. Pavlo produced and appeared in the September 29 concert in Kyiv commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Babyn Yar Holocaust. On October 4, he was invested as Doctoris Honoris Causa at the National Academy of Music in Lviv. 

Pavlo Hunka is Artistic Director of the Ukrainian Art Song Project envisioned and founded by Pavlo who, together with his wife Larysa, teamed up with composer and opera director Roman Hurko to produce the recordings. This ground-breaking project aims to record and publish a veritable anthology of over 1,000 art songs by thirty of Ukraine’s greatest composers for distribution to the music world. Equally important is introducing Ukrainian art songs to students in international conservatories and Faculties of Music. The Project is managed by a volunteer board based in Toronto and Ukraine that is responsible for fulfilling its aims and spearheading communication, fundraising and events: www.ukrainianartsong.art

INTERVIEW EXCERPT

Date and place of interview: Apr. 5, 2023, On Zoom
Length of interview: 1 hour 47 minutes
Interviewer: Ariadna Ochrymovych
Language: English

Paul:  I was actually in Australia on the 24th of February 2022 at the Adelaide Festival singing, of all parts, the Golden Cockerel by Rimsky-Korsakov in Russian, the title role when I sang the Tsar Dodon who is a totally incompetent tsar and he was played as a parody of Putin and all around me the other six soloists were all superstars from the Bolshoi Theatre. The war broke out and it was just incredible, the tension was incredible, but fortunately all of them came out very bravely, very bravely actually because they still lived in Russia but on Facebook they all expressed an outrage about what was going on and I actually went on television in Australia on Prime Time television with the Prime Minister of Australia and if you would have seen that interview I did, I still am alive actually. I was expecting some kind of Novichok* to come through the post from Russia to get rid of me but anyway I'm still here, but there you are!

The thing is that from the 24th of February till today we have been involved in 234 concerts for the benefit of Ukraine and almost all of those concerts, I would say 90 percent plus of the concerts the people have contacted us about, are from young people, young singers, young pianists who want to sing Ukrainian art songs.

Yet they’re benefit concerts and we prepared a package and we've sent it out to all these people we've been involved with.  Can you believe that only three weeks ago I was coaching a Chinese baritone in Beijing how to sing in Ukrainian? I was coaching about six weeks ago a South Korean soprano to sing Ukrainian art song. It was only two weeks ago that I sent music and I will be coaching a young soprano, 24 years of age, I think she is from Reykjavik in Iceland.

Interviewer: Did you speak Ukrainian as a child?

Paul:  Wow that's an interesting question. I really didn't speak very much Ukrainian because my father was at work and my mother was English and I started adopting a love for the Ukrainian language when I my father suggested that I should, you see he heard that I I had a lovely  treble voice as a seven-year-old in a choir when I was at Junior school and then he suggested that I should learn to read the Epistle in the Ukrainian Catholic Church which is sung in the church. We spent hours and hours… the first time I sang the epistle was when I was nine years old but I fell in love with it although my father took me through torment to get me to pronounce Ukrainian and understand every word and thank heavens he did because that put me in very good stead for my final choice of profession which I’m still doing fifty plus years later. That's where I started to learn Ukrainian but I really didn't speak very much Ukrainian until my twenties.  When I was at Manchester University I  lived for two years with a Ukrainian family and I suppose I was very fortunate that they didn't learn very much English.

* Novichok - nerve gas used to poison dissidents