Artistic director of the HRT Tamburitza Orchestra

Born in Koprivnica in 1985, Matija Fortuna earned his diploma from the Albert Štriga Music School in Križevci in 2001, graduating from its Tamburitza Department as the first high-school graduate in that instrument in Croatia’s history. He went on to study at the Zagreb University Academy of Music, earning his degree in Music Theory under the tutelage of Berislav Šipuš (2009) and in Orchestral Conducting in the class of Vjekoslav Šutej and Uroš Lajovic (2011).

He was awarded the Top Scholarship for Top Students prize in the academic year 2010/2011. As part of the Erasmus student exchange program, he spent the final year of his conducting studies at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna where he also completed the postgraduate conducting program in the class of Uroš Lajovic (2013). He honed his skills under the tutelage of eminent conductors and participated in various conducting seminars in Croatia and abroad.

Mr. Fortuna was an artistic associate at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. In 2015, he assisted Georg Fritzsch in the preparation of the opera Der Freischütz at the Jopera Festival in Jennersdorf. In the same year, he was a semi-finalist at the Lovro von Matačić  International Conducting Competition. He worked on a number of opera and symphony productions of the national theaters in Rijeka and Zagreb and the Slovene National Theater Maribor, and performed with the Zagreb Philharmonic, Varaždin Chamber Orchestra, Croatian Chamber Orchestra and Zadar Chamber Orchestra. He collaborates with the HRT Symphony Orchestra, Choir and Tamburitza Orchestra. In 2021, he conducted a symphony concert marking the 30th anniversary of German-Croatian diplomatic ties at the Universität der Künste Hall in Berlin.

He is employed as an assistant professor at the Conducting, Harp and Percussion Department of the Zagreb University Academy of Music. Since September 2021, he has been the chief conductor of the Young Musicians Orchestra.

In the 2023/2024 season, Mr. Fortuna became the Artistic Director of the HRT Tamburitza Orchestra.