STA, 8 December 2018 - Slovenian pop icon Helena Blagne will mark 30 years of her singing career with a spectacle at Ljubljana's Tivoli Hall. The first Slovenian recording artist to fill the country's biggest indoor venue, the Stožice Arena, in 2011, will present her new album tonight.
Blagne returned to the music scene last year after a one-year break with a song about unconditional love Ti Boš Vedno Prvi (You'll Always Be My No. 1), a collaboration with songwriter Raay.
A Slovenian radio hit, the song has more than 1.8 million views on You Tube and gives the title to tonight's concert, at which Blagne will be joined by several Slovenian musicians, from the jazz, funk, Latin and blues fusion ensemble Marko Hatlak Band, to Kvatropirci, ska band Elvis Jackson and Raay.
The 55-year-old Blagne, the most successful Slovenian singer of all time, made her debut performance when she was 12 at a singing competition in Jesenice.
Her career kicked off after she won the hearts of the audience and jury at the Macedonian Makfest music festival in 1986.
Three years later, her duet with opera singer Nace Junkar won the Melodies of Sea and Sun festival held at the Slovenian coast.
Having studied opera singing for several years, Blagne has collaborated with the world's best opera singers, including Placido Domingo and the group Il Divo.
She has recorded 20 albums and sold more than two million records, a milestone that remains out of reach for any other Slovenian musician, according to her label, Dallas Records.
All her concerts have been sold out and she was the first Slovenian artist to fill the Stožice Arena together with Vienna Boys' Choir and three Slovenian tenors in 2011.
She has performed more than 4,000 concerts and won a number of music festival awards throughout the former Yugoslavia.
In the autumn 2006, she also ventured into theatre, having played the role of Agave in The Bacchae, by one of the most acclaimed Slovenian directors Vito Taufer. Currently she is a co-star of a comical musical Menopause alongside three other show business celebrities at Špasteater.
Being a favourite of Slovenian gossip magazines, she made headlines with her divorce in 2013 and her alleged ties to tycoon Ivan Zidar.
Blagne said in an interview ahead of the concert that she was particularly fond of the stage at Tivoli, where her concerts started. "I could have picked Cankarjev Dom for example or the Stožice Arena, which I already sold out years ago. But this stage has a special energy, which I find very important," she told Story magazine.
