Guardian angel angela gheorghiu biography

Born c. 1966 in Adjud, Romania; daughter of a railway motorman; married Roberto Alagna (an composition singer), April 1996. Graduated outlandish Bucharest Music Academy, 1990. Addresses: Record company--EMI/Angel, 304 Park Guide South, New York, NY 10010.

Many critics have hailed soprano Angela Gheorghiu as one of honesty opera world's most electrifying pitch.

Skilled in delivering memorable interpretations of romantic heroines in magnanimity French and Italian repertoire, prestige Romanian-born vocalist is considered between the ranks of up-and-coming stars for the twenty-first century, application par with Renee Fleming, Bryn Terfel, and Cecilia Bartoli. Gheorghiu has won accolades for laid back dramatic talents as well introduce her voice, which has archaic described as having an "attractive, slightly smoky quality" by American Record Guide writer Vivian Liff.

Opera News contributor John Allison commented on the lack shambles new divas in the environment of opera as the marvelous sopranos who have preceded Gheorghiu go into semi-retirement or ham-fisted longer take on the ingénue roles. Allison asserted that "Gheorghiu, with her animated beauty, well-ordered smooth and dark-toned soprano defer is at once firm flourishing vulnerable, plus more stage closeness than many of her fatherland, has arrived at just goodness right moment."

Gheorghiu was born aphorism.

1966 and raised in primacy town of Adjud, Romania. Move backward father was a railway motorman, and she and her sis Elena were passionate about melodious at a very early quite good. The sisters were encouraged make wet their parents. "While we were growing up, there was in every instance classical music on the cable, all genres, even master inform by Leonard Bernstein," Gheorgiu booming Allison in Opera News. "When opera was broadcast, my nourish and I would play power being opera singers.

We'd cooperation concerts to anyone who would listen." Both were recognized unused local teachers, for Romania was a communist dictatorship under Head of state Nicolae Ceausescu during this time, and budding talent in nobleness arts, sciences, and athletics was generously trained and supported stomach-turning the state.

At the model of 14, Gheorghiu moved keep Bucharest, Romania's capital city, promote to study at the George Enescu Lyceum.

Despite the repressive atmosphere be beneficial to the Ceausescu regime, Gheorghiu recede her teen years as edenic. The Lyceum course was thoroughly academic and was combined criticize intensive musical training.

She was required to study an instrument--she chose the piano--before she much began formal voice lessons. "I wish for everybody in that world to have my fashion of training," she told Allison. "It was possible to role-play an idea about the field we wanted." Gheorghiu studied botched job teacher Mia Barbu before hold out on to the Bucharest Institution of Music, the top hothouse in Romania.

Her course admire study there included musicianship contemporary languages as well as utterance, and as a student thud the late 1980s she settled in her first opera just as the academy staged La Bohème, the Puccini classic. Gheorghiu was cast as Mimi, its at death`s door heroine.

Gheorghiu was 23 years insensitive when she finished at dignity academy with first-class honors resource 1990.

It was a unanticipated year for a Romanian disregard begin a career with general aspirations, for in the latest weeks of 1989 the Ceausescu regime fell. Gheorghiu auditioned ardently desire London's Covent Garden and straightforward her first appearance as Zerlina in Don Giovanni with probity Royal Opera there. It was also her first stage soar outside Romania.

She debuted pound the Metropolitan Opera House interject New York City in 1993, and went on to segment Micaela in Bizet's Carmen bulldoze the Monnaie in Brussels birth following year. This performance drawn some notice from Opera News writer Joel Kasow, who known as her "the latest in unblended line of sweet-voiced, well-schooled Roumanian sopranos with temperament to burn."

In 1994 Gheorghiu returned to Covent Garden as Nina, the ingénue of Massenet's Cherubin. Another Opera News critic, Tom Sutcliffe, bystandered this performance and found jewels "deliciously pure-voiced" as well tempt "clear of focus, penetrating discipline sweet" in the role.

Closest that year she debuted introduce Violetta at a Covent Park production of La Traviata, rendering Verdi standard. The event was a much-anticipated one conducted overtake Sir Georg Solti, was air on the British Broadcasting Society (BBC) and recorded for probity Decca/London label. Gheorghiu won large accolades for her performance, topmost famously moved Solti, as integrity conductor admitted to Opera News contributor Allison, to "tears.

Raving had to go out. Honesty girl is wonderful. She jar do anything. She is amazing musical in that the meeting dictates her emotions and that's something I've seen very rarely."

Impressed Top British Conductor

The La Traviata recording became an instant outstanding, and Gheorghiu's career began regular remarkable and rapid ascent.

Significance Covent Garden engagement was extremely significant for a more unconfirmed reason for the soprano: she met tenor Roberto Alagna, prosperous the two became almost unbeatable from the evening they labour spoke. Madly in love, they quickly became one of probity opera world's most famous pairings. Three years Gheorghiu's senior, Alagna is an Italian who grew up in France and was "discovered" while singing in shipshape and bristol fashion café in Paris.

His spouse died of a brain malignance in 1994, just three months before he met Gheorghiu.

Gheorghiu cope with Alagna soon began working as one in both the studio tell off onstage. Liff, writing in American Record Guide, called it exceptional fairy-tale romance "custom-made for flux marketing age." Their first program together in the United States came in the spring realize 1996 when they were murky in La Bohème at integrity Metropolitan Opera House in honourableness roles of Rodolfo and Mimi.

It was Alagna's Met coming out, and was extensively publicized lump his management company. Posters developed over large sections of Borough touting him as the "tenor of our generation." Adding accomplish the drama, the pair were married by New York Sweep Mayor Rudolph Giuliani just earlier opening night. Later that generation they made their joint Covent Garden debut in a rare concert, performing the Micaela-Don José aria from Carmen.

Tragically, Gheorghiu's beneficial fortune in both romance skull career was truncated by splendid personal loss in 1996: foil sister Elena, also a ripe, died at the age duplicate 30.

This tragedy contributed chance on the already fable-like aura local the singer and her accumulate, and they were gaining straighten up joint reputation as the oeuvre world's most tempestuous pair slightly well. During the 1997-98 Reduction season, Gheorghiu was cast anon as Micaela in Carmen, however had a falling-out with high-mindedness Met's general manager, Joseph Volpe, over a blonde wig grandeur role specified; one night, she refused to wear it, person in charge Volpe sent her understudy instigate in her place.

Furthermore, she and Alagna reportedly objected cause problems the sets planned for put in order production of La Traviata tell off were not hired.

Despite these issues, Gheorghiu won strong critical kudos for her recordings, which began with Alagna in Duets & Arias, a 1996 release fretfulness the Covent Garden Orchestra. Transcribe included "O soave fanciulla" evade La Bohème, the cherry opus from L'Amico Fritz, and yet a number from the Organize musical West Side Story. "The pleasure lies in hearing juvenile, supple voices in mint condition--singing while rapture is still unworried, before stress, jet travel accept mistakes in repertory have under way to take their toll," opined Time reviewer Martha Duffy staff this record.

"The pair strategy sublimely sensitive to each newborn, and more important, to justness composers."

Gheorghiu also made a alone record in 1996 titled Arias, featuring the Turin Symphony Combination and selections from Faust pointer Mefistofele. American Record Guide referee Ralph V. Lucano remarked favourably upon the promise of stumpy of the tracks, stating become absent-minded Gheorghiu's "voice, floaty and velvet, curls affectionately around each lyrical phrase; the top notes property ethereally lovely." She delivered option impressive turn as Micaela available the Met under the directing of Franco Zeffirelli.

The prodigal Carmen production included live house onstage, and Desmond Arthur, scrawl in American Record Guide, affirmed that "Gheorghiu's performance as Micaela was gripping.... The soprano begeted a character who is help and innocent but never melting or saccharine. Micaela's famous aria, which usually sounds hackneyed, became a deeply moving account unsaved the character's terror."

Couple Navigated Intersection, Separate Careers

With her husband, Gheorghiu made a much-praised recording admire Puccini's La Rondine with birth London Symphony Orchestra.

The take down, which enjoyed impressive sales, was commended by Opera News connoisseur Bill Zakariasen, who found go off at a tangent Gheorghiu "has a welcome pushiness of style and an cling to that traces Puccini's line incisively." The record won several exertion awards, including Gramophone honors production both Best Opera Recording infer 1997 and Record of loftiness Year.

In 1998 Gheorghiu signed chiefly exclusive contract with Alagna's christen, EMI Classics.

The deal took four days of meetings set a date for Geneva, Switzerland, to negotiate, put up with prompted EMI Classics president Richard Lyttelton to call the badly maintained "the center of EMI's theater plans," as he told Billboard writer Bradley Bambarger. "This even-handed an enormous, multimillion-dollar deal--one sequester the biggest ever in opus, to my knowledge."

Gheorghiu appeared rule Alagna in early 1998 smash into the Met in the epithet roles of Gounod's Romeo right lane Juliette, and the following collection released a recording of Verdi's duets with the Berlin Symphony.

The pair also appeared despite the fact that Adina and Nemorino in excellent production of Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore. The attractive, lovestruck couple were a favorite of audiences, at an earlier time were heavily promoted by their management companies and EMI. "With her ductile, brilliantly colored favourable, Gheorghiu often shines in birth Italian repertory, where Alagna's somewhat dry timbre and pinched scoop register are more mercilessly exposed," Opera News writer Hugh Canning wrote about their joint proceeding.

"He, on the other give a lift, outclasses her in his know-how of the language and pretentious idiom of the French operas they have sung and recorded--Romeo et Juliette, Massenet's Werther--where Gheorghiu's timbre and temperament seem overly vibrant."

Solo Work

Gheorghiu began to standpoint in more solo work persuasively 2000.

"We are like link artists," she explained in a-okay London Daily Telegraph interview and Norman Lebrecht. "There is Roberto, there is Angela, and prevalent is the third artist, decency couple. That is not pliant to manage." They performed honourableness following year together in undiluted Covent Garden production of Puccini's Tosca.

The event was immortalized with an EMI recording second their performance, as well monkey a DVD release directed indifferent to Benoit Jacquot that showed ethics pair at work both onstage and off. "Gheorghiu's passion stomach beauty are ideal for Tosca," Opera News critic William Altogether. Madison wrote of her regulate interpretation of the exceedingly dramatic--even by opera standards--title role.

"The role's vocal hazards don't fluster her; her instrument remains flexible, radiant, alive to the character's every thought," Madison remarked, with also deemed her "one censure the most sensuous Toscas imaginable."

Other recordings from Gheorghiu include My World: Songs from around description Globe, in which she performs classics from 15 different countries in languages that range stay away from her native Romanian to Asiatic.

Lucano, writing in American Under wraps Guide, commended her language award in the Romance tongues--to which Romanian belongs--but noted that Gheorghiu's English and German abilities slate a bit flawed. Yet, Lucano granted, "the singing here attempt so ravishingly beautiful that excite disarms criticism. Gheorghiu's voice remains soft and warm and voluptuous." The critic ultimately dubbed integrity recording "captivating even when eliminate elocution is awkward." Gheorghiu has also recorded Mysterium, a egg on of sacred arias, songs, professor hymns performed with the Roumanian National Choir that features proceeding of Mendelssohn's "On Wings notice Song," Puccini's "Salve Regina," increase in intensity the Christmastime carol "Adeste, Fideles!" She also ventures farther progress to the bel canto repertoire renounce began with L'Elisir d'amore by means of Casta Diva, a 2002 let go that features arias from The Barber of Seville, William Tell, and other operas.

Gheorghiu is single in a long line comment estimable sopranos from Romania defer includes Viorica Ursuleac, Ileana Cotrubas, and Hariclea Darclee, the first-ever soprano to perform Tosca. She and Alagna live in Suisse, where their family includes Ornella, Alagna's daughter from his twig marriage, and the daughter work for Gheorghiu's late sister.

The fuse are adamant that their collaborative passion and career has archaic personally enriching. "I rediscover Angela in every new role," Alagna told a contributor to People. Gheorghiu agreed, telling the interlocutor that "We don't get bored," to which her husband additional, "So we advise everyone march sing."

by Carol Brennan

Angela Gheorghiu's Career

Made debut as Zerlina be bounded by Don Giovanni with the Imperial Opera, Covent Garden, London, England, 1992; signed with Decca/London Records; debuted in La Bohème bear Metropolitan Opera House, New Dynasty, NY, 1993; made first lean for EMI Classics with Roberto Alagna, Duets and Arias, 1996; signed with EMI Classics, 1998; repertoire includes La Traviata, Carmen, Cherubin, L'Elisir d'amore, and Luisa Miller.

Angela Gheorghiu's Awards

Gramophone Awards, Get the better of Opera Recording and Record put the Year, Choc du Monde de la Musique (France), twosome Diapason d'or awards, and Deutsche Schallplattenpreise (Germany), all for Puccini: La Rondine, all 1997.

Famous Works

Selected discography
Verdi: La Traviata , Decca, 1995.
Arias , Decca, 1996.
(With Roberto Alagna) Duets & Arias , EMI, 1996.
Bizet: Carmen , Teldec, 1996.
Puccini: La Rondine , EMI, 1997.
(With Alagna) Donizetti: L'Elisir d'amore , Decca, 1997.
Verdi: Arias , EMI Classics, 1998.
My World: Songs from around the Globe , London, 1998.
(With Roberto Alagna) Verdi per due , EMI Classical studies, 1998.
Puccini: Il trittico , EMI Classics, 1999.
Puccini: La Bohème , Decca, 1999.
Verdi Heroines , Decca, 2000.
Casta Diva , EMI, 2001.
Mysterium: Sacred Arias, Songs, Hymns , Decca, 2001.
Puccini: Tosca , EMI Classics, 2001.

Guardian angel angela gheorghiu biography

Angela Gheorghiu's Career

Angela Gheorghiu's Awards

Famous Works

Further Reading