Rajko Koritnik was born on 24th August 1930 in Lozice in the Vipava Valley. As a child, he was introduced to singing in his family, where everyone loved to sing and sang beautifully. As a young man he joined the Lipa Male Voice Choir in Ajdovščina, today known as the Srečko Kosovel Male Voice Choir.
In 1954 he moved to Kamnik. A year later, Ado Darjan, a professor at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana, heard him and invited him to take part in the then popular radio programme Show What You Can Do. He won the first prize with the song Mamma son tanto felice. In the autumn of 1955, he was accepted to the Secondary Music School in Ljubljana in the class of professor Darjan. After the professor’s death he continued his singing studies with professor Vekoslav Janko. He also attracted the youngest of the four Koritnik brothers, Stane Koritnik, to study singing, a baritone with whom he shared the stage of the Ljubljana Opera House on several occasions in later years.
On 28th November 1960, tenor Rajko Koritnik made his debut at the Ljubljana Opera House with the role of Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca. The opera’s management immediately offered him a permanent engagement and Koritnik remained loyal to the opera house until his retirement in 1980, and he was still performing there as a guest for the next eight years. For almost three decades he was the leading tenor and one of the indispensable members of the Ljubljana Opera Ensemble.
Connoisseurs and critics alike praised Koritnik for his beautiful, clear voice, excellent bel canto technique and stage presence. On the occasion of his debut as Cavaradossi, conductor and music critic Uroš Prevoršek wrote of Koritnik that he ”distinguishes himself especially in the high register with his freshness, velvety softness and lustre, so that in many ways he resembles the voices of Italian singers”.
In 1963, the Ljubljana Opera House toured Klagenfurt with Rigoletto. The then thirty-three-year-old tenor Rajko Koritnik performed the role of the Duke. He was praised in all the reviews as an outstanding bel canto tenor. A critic in the Allgemeine Bauernzeitung wrote that Koritnik ”surpasses even the Italians in the sonority of his voice”, while a critic in Vestnik referred to him as a singer who ”with his brilliant physique and especially with his tenor brilliance, was a true Renaissance duke, a boisterous, inexhaustible merry man and lover”. That he really impressed the audience and the music critics of Klagenfurt with both his singing and his acting in the role of the Duke can be read in the review written by H. Schmeider in Die Neue Zeit after the performance, namely that ”in the role of the Duke of Mantua, Rajko Koritnik showed his supple, true Italian tenor, still held here and there by bits of slag, through which the real gold that this promising singer has in his throat shines through. Acting-wise, he has also convincingly portrayed the Duke – the womanizer”.
In his later roles, Rajko Koritnik was also described by critics as a lyric tenor of great vocal range and a singer of extraordinary singing culture with a remarkable sense of musical phrase. His singing qualities and acting skills have elevated him to the top of Slovenian opera singing.
He was most distinguished in Italian and French operas and in veristic operas. He appeared in 72 leading roles. Early in his career, he performed in major roles such as Cavaradossi (Giacomo Puccini: Tosca), Pollione (Vincenzo Bellini: Norma) and Nadir (Georges Bizet: Les Pêcheurs de perles). Among his best roles are the Duke of Mantua (Giuseppe Verdi: Rigoletto), Manrico (Giuseppe Verdi: Il Trovatore), Des Grieux (Jules Massenet: Manon), Don Carlos (Giuseppe Verdi: Don Carlos), Werther (Jules Massenet: Werther), Alfredo (Giuseppe Verdi: La Traviata), Tourridu (Pietro Mascagni: Cavalleria rusticana), Rodolfo (Giacomo Puccini: La Bohème), Pinkerton (Giacomo Puccini: Madame Butterfly).
He liked to perform in Slavic opera roles: the boyar Ivan Sergeyevich Likov (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Zarskaya nevesta), Janko (Bedřich Smetana: Prodaná nevěsta), Vladimir (Alexander Borodin: Knyaz Igor), Gricko (Modest Mussorgsky: Sorochinskaya jarmarka), Zinovy Borisovich Izmaylov (Dmitri Shostakovich: Katarina Izmaylova), Astrologer (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Zolotoi petushok).
He loved performing in Slovenian opera roles, such as Franjo (Anton Foerster: Gorenjski slavček), Ivo (Marjan Kozina: Ekvinokcij- Equinox), Hagart (Danilo Švara: Ocean) and Albert (Risto Savin: Lepa Vida).
His most frequent appearances were as Ernesto in Donizetti’s opera Don Pasquale, a role he recreated more than 500 times.
A signed piano extract of Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Don Pasquale, from which Rajko Koritnik learned the role of Ernesto and in which he recorded that he sang the performance 563 times.
With the exception of Split and Novi Sad, Rajko Koritnik has appeared in all opera houses in the former Yugoslavia. In 1964 he went on a grand tour with the Ljubljana Opera House to the former Soviet Union (Moscow, Kiev). He toured in the former Czechoslovakia (Prague, Bratislava), Austria (Klagenfurt, Graz), Switzerland (Zurich, Winterthur), Germany (Mannheim, Bayreuth), the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy (Reggio Emilia, Parma, Firenze, Modena, Mantova, Treviso).
As an excellent interpreter of roles in operas by Italian composers, Koritnik has received many engagements in Italian opera houses (Trieste, Siracusa).
At the Rijeka Opera Theatre he appeared as the Duke of Mantua in a cast with the prima donna of the Roman opera Elvidia Ferracuti as Gilda and the excellent Trieste Verdian baritone Piero Cappuccilli as Rigoletto.
Throughout his career he has sung in more than 1600 performances.
For eight years he was a regular guest at the opera festivals in Opatija and Pula. With the Ljubljana Opera Ensemble he performed at the Ljubljana Festival and the Prague Spring International Festival (Pražské Jaro).
Rajko Koritnik was also distinguished by his exceptional sense of people and his approach to them. He liked to bring singing and opera closer to everyone. During his career, he has performed in many places all over Slovenia. He has performed at charity events and free concerts, sung at concerts for young audiences, in nursing homes and hospitals, for factory employees. In total, he has performed at over 2300 concerts.
He has recorded the following operas for RTV Slovenia in their entirety: Tosca (Giacomo Puccini), Prodaná nevěsta (Bedřich Smetana), Don Pasquale (Gaetano Donizetti), Manon (Jules Massenet), Cavalleria rusticana (Pietro Mascagni), Boris Godunov (Modest Mussorgsky), and Verdi’s Falstaff and The Power of Fate. The opera Ocean by the Slovenian composer Danilo Švara was also recorded in its entirety.
Koritnik recorded selected excerpts from Tijardović’s operetta Mala Floramye and a number of operatic arias and duets for RTV Slovenia. He also recorded for RTV Slovenia, accompanied by pianist Andrej Jarc, a cycle of Karel Pahor’s Šest ljubezenskih.
For RAI in Trieste he recorded the lieder of Anton Lajovic and Rado Simoniti, as well as several arias and duets.
In 2002, RTV Slovenia released a recording of Puccini’s complete opera Tosca, recorded in 1966. On the recording, in addition to Rajko Koritnik as Mario Cavaradossi, we can also hear Vanda Gerlovič as Tosca and Samo Smerkolj as Scarpio.
In 2007, RTV Slovenia released the album Rajko Koritnik, tenor – operatic arias and duets.
In 1982, Rajko Koritnik received an Award of the City of Ljubljana for his work, and ten years later the Betetto Award, Slovenia’s highest award for artistic achievement and all-round contribution to Slovenian music.
Rajko Koritnik – singing pedagogue
A special and important chapter in Rajko Koritnik’s life is his role and work as a singing pedagogue. He began his pedagogical work in September 1984, when he accepted the invitation Aleksandra Trebižan who was the headmistress of the Vinko Vodopivec Ajdovščina Music School. As a dedicated singing teacher, Koritnik founded a strong and successful singing department, which continues to distinguish the music school today. During his teaching career – from the 1984/85 school year to 2007 – a large number of young singers gained singing skills in his class. In addition to the technical elements of singing technique that he passed to his pupils, Rajko Koritnik’s distinctive feature was his pleasant and respectful attitude towards the singers. He was able to listen to them, to understand them, but at the same time to demand from them and encourage them. He was able to establish a trusting relationship with his pupils, through which he taught and educated young singers. His positive and cheerful character helped him to do this. His singing lessons were not just about acquiring singing technique. While teaching, he also gave his pupils an insight into the art of opera, telling them about his singing career in an unobtrusive and not at all haughty manner, thus inspiring his pupils to take up the art of singing. A large number of singing pupils from his class acquired the singing skills that have enabled them to work and continue to work as soloists and, above all, as singers in choirs.
Some of the singers who acquired their first singing skills in Rajko Koritnik’s class at the Vinko Vodopivec Ajdovščina Music School, later continued their singing studies and embarked on a successful professional singing career. Koritnik prepared them for admission to further singing studies and for entry to the Ljubljana Opera House. Among them are baritone Marko Kobal, a champion of the Ljubljana Opera House, and tenor Matej Vovk, a permanent member of the soloist ensemble. Koritnik’s class includes long-standing members of the Ljubljana Opera Chorus: tenor Jože Oblak and basses Silvo and Damijan Škvarč.
Soprano Jerica Rudolf, also his pupil, is active in the concert field of vocal recreation, but devotes the greater part of her activity to pedagogical work. As a vocal pedagogue, she is active in the field of vocal pedagogy in Slovenia. Immediately after completing her studies, she began teaching singing at the Vinko Vodopivec Ajdovščina Music School, where she continues to teach to this day. Rajko Koritnik became her mentor and colleague.
Despite the health problems and ailments that the years have brought, Rajko Koritnik has always retained and expressed a positive energy and an infectious ‘joie de vivre’. He loved working with and teaching young people. In this way he kept his connection with the world of music and singing, for which he lived and loved very much, alive. This was also the case just before entering the 2007/2008 school year. Unfortunately, it started without him.
Rajko Koritnik died on 18th August 2007 at his home in Lozice.
Rajko Koritnik International Singing Competition
The singing competition was created as an expression of gratitude, a tribute and a desire to preserve the memory of the Slovenian tenor Rajko Koritnik. Naming the international competition after him is also a tribute to a dedicated teacher, but also a symbolic tribute to all the so-called first teachers. The first teacher provides the singer with an important basic singing knowledge, overcomes beginner’s difficulties with the singer, guides and directs the singer. In addition to his knowledge of singing and his didactic skills, the first teacher is also characterised by noble personal qualities such as patience and perseverance when teaching beginners. The first teacher ignites in the young person the spark and the desire to study and sing, and perhaps the decision to continue his/her studies and to pursue a professional singing career. For this step, the teacher not only prepares the singer technically and performatively, but also provides moral support and encouragement.
Rajko Koritnik was exactly like that. A dedicated, persistent, respectful, good, positive and inspiring person. That is why the Rajko Koritnik International Singing Competition is also a tribute to him as a first teacher, and at the same time a tribute to all first teachers who are often unjustly overlooked. The first teachers that every singer had and without whom no one starts and continues their singing career.