Iwona Sobotka gained international recognition as the Grand Prix winner of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Belgium. She was also honored with First Prize at the Polish Art Song Competition in Warsaw and First Prize at the International Auditions of Artists from the East and West in New York, leading to her Carnegie Hall debut.

In the 2024/25 season, Iwona Sobotka began her engagements performing Verdi’s Messa da Requiem with esteemed conductor Riccardo Muti and the Orchestre National de France. Throughout the season, she will take on new roles such as Aida and Turandot at the Teatr Wielki in Poznań, Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Taipei, Amelia in Un ballo in maschera at the Slovak National Theatre, Gioconda at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania and Desdemona in Otello at the Teatro Coccia Novara. In addition, she will reprise roles such as Madama Butterfly at the Wrocław Opera and Rusalka at the Grand Theatre in Poznań.

In addition to her operatic engagements, Sobotka’s plans for the season include numerous concerts and festival appearances. She will perform L. Janáček’s ‘Glagolitic Mass’ with the Czech Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle, G. Verdi’s Requiem with the Warsaw Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and G. Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand with the Krakow Philharmonic. Festival appearances will include R. Strauss’s Four Last Songs at the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival in Warsaw, Szymanowski’s Songs of a Fairytale Princess at the Warsaw Eufonie Festival, and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival.

Last season, Sobotka was an artist in residence with the Rubinstein Philharmonic Orchestra, where she showcased her versatility in four outstanding programs: she presented Strauss’s Four Last Songs, Verdi’s Requiem Mass, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, and made her debut as Isolde in a concert performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. In addition, she also took on the role of featured soloist during the season-opening concerts of both the Warsaw Philharmonic and the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, among other engagements. On the opera stage, Sobotka made her debut in the roles of Manon Lescaut, Desdemona in Otello, and Leonora in Il Trovatore. In addition, she reprised her acclaimed performances of Violetta Valéry in La Traviata and the title role of Dvořák’s masterpiece Rusalka, performing in Poland, Spain, Estonia, and Slovakia.

Highlights of previous seasons include numerous symphonic programmes with Sir Simon Rattle, including Christ on the Mount of Olives and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass with the Staatskapelle Berlin, Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater and Brahms’s German Requiem with the London Symphony Orchestra. She has also performed with renowned orchestras such as the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Vienna Symphony, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Nashville Symphony, among others, and has worked with many of today’s leading conductors, including Sir Colin Davis, Marek Janowski, Vladimir Jurowski, Marco Armiliato, Teodor Currentzis, Jesús López Cobos, Juanjo Mena and Massimo Zanetti.

Iwona Sobotka made her opera debut at the Opéra National de Paris in 2004, singing the roles of the First Lady in The Magic Flute and Ygraine in Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-Bleue. She also appeared at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, singing the title role in Halka and Liù in Turandot. In her debut at the Osterfestspiele Baden-Baden, she sang the role of Blumenmädchen in Wagner’s Parsifal, performing with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle. Notably, she played Pamina in Barrie Kosky’s renowned production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Komische Oper in Berlin, followed by an international tour to Australia, New Zealand, Macau and Taiwan.

She has also enjoyed notable success in other roles, including Roxana (King Roger) at the Chicago Opera Theater, Daughter (The Nose) at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Tatyana (Eugene Onegin) and Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) at the Tchaikovsky Perm State Opera. She performed Violetta (La Traviata) and Mimi (La bohème) at the Polish National Opera in Warsaw and the Podlaska Opera. She also took on the role of Magda in La Rondine at the Silesian Opera, as well as the title roles of Madame Butterfly, Tosca and Rusalka at the Teatr Wielki in Poznan.

After her studies at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, Iwona continued her musical education under the tutelage of the esteemed artist and pedagogue