On the occasion of the opera singer's 70th birthday, a video portrait of the artist was presented, produced by Studio MEG based on the idea and directorial design of Janez Meglič. The screening was followed by an interview with the opera singer, conducted by Peter Bedjanič.
Bassist Zdravko Kovač was born on September 24, 1929 in Ljubljana. After matriculation, he completed private solo studies with prof. Ksenia Kušej Novak. Even as a child, he performed on the stage of the Ljubljana Opera House in youth plays, operettas and operas. The first major role he sang at the Ljubljana Opera House after finishing his studies was the role of Monterono in Verdi's Rigoletto. With him, the Ljubljana Opera gained a high lyrical bassist with a large vocal range, musicality, a good memory and an unusually large voice: two octaves and a solid fifth on top of that. He could sing the lowest bass as well as the highest baritone roles. Zdravko Kovač showed his extraordinary vocal range at the very beginning of his career, when he sang the short but very demanding role of the Scythian king Toas in Gluck's opera Iphigenia na Taurida. During the thirty years of his artistic activity, Zdravko Kovač sang a large number of demanding bass roles, among which we can mention the merman in Rusalka, Mephisto in Faust, Philip II. in Don Carlos, Prince Gremin in Prince Igor, Dosife in Hovanščina, the magician Chelia in the opera Zaljuben ve three oranges, Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville, Banquo in Macbeth, Canciana in The Four Roughnecks, Taos in Iphigenia on Taurida, the king in Lohengrin and all four the bass parts in Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman, the king in Aida.
At a singing competition in Geneva in 1954, Zdravko Kovač received a diploma. He toured most of the opera theaters of the former Yugoslavia and was one of the leading Yugoslav oratorio bassists; he sang a large number of demanding and weighty bass operatic roles. He performed at home and abroad and conquered the audience with his musicality and sense of stage design, as well as with his imposing stage presence. He established himself as a soloist in oratorios in Haydn's Seasons, and then in Zagreb in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, conducted by Friedrich Zaun, then head of the Zagreb Philharmonic. This success earned Kovač an invitation to Vienna, where he sang in Bach's Matthew Passion under the direction of the legendary conductor Karl Böhm. He also participated in the opening of the New Festival Theater in Salzburg. Some recordings are kept by RTV Slovenia (Hoffman's Tales, Canciano in Štireh Grobijane). He recorded the title role in Nikolaj Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Tsar Sultan for Philips in Zagreb. He retired in 1983. He celebrated his seventieth birthday in good health, but after two years he succumbed to a rapidly progressing illness and died on July 28, 2001 in Rijeka. Zdravko Kovač belongs to that brilliant generation of singers of the Ljubljana opera, in which, besides him, there were also Sonja Hočevar, Sonja Draksler, Cvetka Ahlin, Gašper Dermota and a little later Zlata Ognjanović and Bozena Glavak. Primož Kurent: One Hundred Slovenian Opera Stars, Calendar Collection, Prešernova družba dd; Ljubljana, 2005