Israeli opera star who sings about chocolate heads to Carnegie Hall

When Israeli Opera soloist Nofar Yacobi performs Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in New York City’s Carnegie Hall on May 30, she knows she’ll feel connected to her most recent Tel Aviv performance, in the opera “Ariadne auf Naxos.”

Both works are sung in German and were written in similar periods, said Yacobi.

“The sense of performing the music from a certain place inspires a lot of passion and emotion for me,” said Yacobi. “And it’s something I get to share with the audience.”

Yacobi is this year’s recipient of the Ottorino Respighi Prize in which she will be featured as a soprano soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of New York for their closing performance of the 24-25 season at Carnegie Hall.

“I sent my application for the prize and didn’t hear from them and said, ‘Okay, they’re playing with me,'” said Yacobi, “and then I got an email that they wanted to speak to me. It was such a good surprise.”

Taking chances and trying out for new opportunities is a particular passion for Yacobi.

“That’s my approach, it’s not just because I’m a performing artist, it’s who I am,” she said. “I just like to create things, to share things with the world, to give and to receive, it’s reciprocal.”

Yacobi is a thirtysomething opera singer who represents the younger generation of fans of the 400-year-old art form, regularly posting snippets of her performances and favorite pieces on Instagram.

She’s also taken professional leaps more than once.

Ten years ago, Yacobi uploaded her operatic reaction to an Israir flight with her tongue-in-cheek performance of “Queen of Chocolate.”

She also led a broad online project during the coronavirus called “Musical Solidarity,” gathering 500 musicians from 65 opera houses worldwide, a choir, and an orchestra to perform Verdi’s “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” to foment hope, solidarity, and freedom.

Growing up in the country’s center, in the town of Kiryat Ono, Yacobi played piano from a young age, and expanded her repertoire to several instruments, finding she had a skill and talent for musical performance.

When her piano teacher asked Yacobi to try out for a choir when she was 12, she wasn’t interested but ended up falling in love with the vocal art.

“I heard that first piece and it was something magical,” said Yacobi, who joined the choir.

Yet it wasn’t until Yacobi was in her teens and wanted to explore opera more deeply that she discovered she was more familiar with the art form than she’d realized.

Her parents were opera fans who often played opera music in the house, sometimes waking their kids up in the morning with Maria Callas’ “Tosca,” in the original Italian.

Yacobi’s mother is Italian-born, and Yacobi has always spoken Italian at home.

“I read the words and I realized that I already knew it,” she said. “It’s a particularly sweet sound when you realize you know this music, that it’s already part of you.”

Yacobi loves that opera is an art form that isn’t electronically amplified in performances, allowing the singers’ voices to physically touch the audience’s ears.

“There is nothing in between your voice and their ears,” she said. “It’s very intimate, it puts you in direct contact with the audience. And that’s something I’m very happy to do.”

Yacobi went on to study at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music and later auditioned for the Israeli Opera, where she was immediately nabbed as a soloist.

She’s performed in many opera halls worldwide, including in the last 19 months, since the Hamas attack of October 7.

While some Israeli musicians have been shunned from festivals and disinvited from performances, Yacobi said she hasn’t experienced any anti-Israel sentiment from colleagues or audiences.

“I haven’t encountered anything, and I don’t think about it,” she said. “The ongoing war and the hostages are always on my mind, and the whole situation is always on my mind. It’s a kind of open wound that no one knows when it will close, but I can’t let it bother me.”