The concert and opera alto singer and music teacher Zora Ropas was born on 20 September 1893 in Novo mesto. Just like her sister, Ervina Ropas, she acquired her first music education in her hometown. She went to the primary and bourgeois school as well as the merchant class at the Šmihel monastery school. From 1910 to 1911, she attended the accounting class and successfully finished it by passing an exam at the Graz law faculty. From 1912 to 1917, she attended solo singing lessons at the Glasbena matica association in Ljubljana carried out by the composer Matej Hubad and piano lessons by Anton Trost and Jaroslav Chlumecki. In 1918, she continued the solo singing studies at the conservatory in Zagreb and at the Glasbena matica conservatory in Ljubljana between 1919 and 1921. Since August 1920, she worked at the Ljubljana opera house for a year, where she performed Marta (Faust). From 1921 to 1923, she studied singing in Prague. There, she performed at concerts for various associations and presented the Slovenian music. In 1923, she returned to her home country and began to sing at the Ljubljana opera house again. In the next three years, she performed in various operas, e.g. Gorenjski slavček, Lepa Vida, Jevgenij Onjegin, Pikova dama etc.

Between 1927 and 1929, she taught solo singing at the Glasbena matica school and at private lessons in Novo mesto. She also gave concerts in many towns ((Maribor, Celje, Čakovec, Karlovac etc.). From 1929 to 1931, she had a concert tour among the emigrants all over the USA hosted by local associations and radio shows. When she returned to her home country, she dedicated most of her time to teaching. Since 1931, she acted as a contract teacher for solo and youth choir singing, music theory and piano and later as the manager of the Glasbena matica school in Novo mesto until the school was abolished (1935). At the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Glasbena matica association in 1933, she organised and led the staging of the opera V vodnjaku (Vilem Blodek). Between 1935 and 1936, she was a teacher at the school and a conductor of the choir of the music association Mokranjac in Skopje. She returned to Celje because of her illness and taught at the Glasbena matica school in Celje in the school year 1936/37 and later at the Glasbena matica school in Maribor. In April 1941, the German occupying forces drove her away to Novo mesto. From autumn 1941 until the end of the school year 1950/51, when she retired, she taught solo singing at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana and has raised many prominent singers (H. Žunec, F. Leskošek, J. Triler etc.). In March 1952, she was invited by the school of music in Koper to organise a department for solo singing lessons. Zora Ropas has raised many solo singers performing at concerts and in radio shows. She died on 21 October 1976 in Ljubljana and is buried in Šmihel in Novo mesto.

 

Bibliography:

• Zora Ropas. Slovenski biografski leksikon. Accessed on 22 July 2017 at http://www.slovenska-biografija.si/oseba/sbi516860/.

• Podelitev Trdinovih nagrad. Dolenjski list. 12 11 1954, No. 45, p. 2. Accessed on 22 7 2017 at http://www.dolenjskilist.si/media/arhiv-pdf/dl/1954/DL_1954_11_12_45_0244.pdf.