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INTRODUCTION
Today, we speak with Romanian baritone Mihai Damian, 2025 Operalia winner and recipient of the Rolex Audience and Cultural Prizes. Known for his powerful tone and compelling stage presence, Mihai is rapidly gaining international acclaim, with upcoming debuts at the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera & Ballet, and Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. A 2024 graduate of the Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music, he has already performed a wide range of roles and earned numerous prestigious awards. In this conversation with Alice Lechner, Mihai shares his experiences at Operalia, his upcoming debuts, his passion for music, and much more.
BIOGRAPHY
Rising star Mihai Damian is the 2025 winner of the Operalia competition where he also claimed the Rolex Audience Prize and the Cultural Prize. The Romanian baritone is fast gaining international acclaim for his powerful, noble tone and compelling stage presence. Future seasons already see him making important debuts at the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera & Ballet, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Staatsoper Berlin, New National Theatre Tokyo and Dallas Opera.
The 2025/26 season sees Damian takes further strides on the international stage making his role debuts as Mercutio in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, and as Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff at the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari. On the concert platform, he performs Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death with the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and a role debut as Daniele in the world premiere of Umberto Giordano’s Marina in concert with the Fondazione I Pomeriggi Musicali.
A 2024 graduate of the Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music in Cluj, where he pursued both conducting and singing, he was immediately invited upon his graduation, to join the ensemble of Romanian National Opera in Cluj where his roles include Belcore in L’elisir d’amore, Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Conte in Le Nozze di Figaro, Sonora in La fanciulla del West and Marcello in La Boheme.
As a guest artist Damian has performed Masetto in Don Giovanni with Teatro dell’Opera di Roma at the Terme di Caracalla, Escamillo in Carmen at the Romanian National Opera in Bucharest, Paolo in Simon Boccanegra at the Romanian National Opera in Timisoara, Donald in Billy Budd at the Enescu Festival, Guglielmo in Le Villi at Konzerthaus Berlin and Giacomo in Verdi’s Giovanna d`Arco at Ópera de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.
His vocal symphonic repertoire includes Carmina Burana, Rachmaninoff’s The Bells, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Faure’s Requiem, Messa di Gloria by Puccini and Messa per Rossini.
Damian is also a laureate ofthe 62nd International Tenor Viñas Singing Competition, including Second Prize and a sweep of prestigious distinctions such as the Audience Prize, Verdi Prize, Houston Grand Opera Prize, Teatro Real Prize, Best Baritone Prize, and the European Opera Centre Prize; the Eva Marton International Singing Competition in Budapest (2nd prize) and Concorso Lirico Internazionale di Portofino where he was awarded the Eva Kleinitz Award for a Young Talent. At home in Romania, he won the Grand Prize and Public’s Award at Verum Solitus Opera Competition, First Prize at Mozart International Competition and the Grand Prize at Alexandru Fărcaș Voice Competition in Romania.
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INTERVIEW
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Alice Lechner comes from a music-loving family. Her first encounter with the opera universe was at the tender age of six. The grandeur of the stage productions and costumes, the backstage chatter, and last, but definitely not least, the music left her in awe, beginning with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The overall feeling that opera awakens in anyone who gets a glimpse into this part of artistic eternity, that each and every day passes the test of time, was what drew her to stay and be a part of this world. The Opera House of Brașov became her second home, and the people who worked there were her second family.
Since then, Alice has devoted her spare time to maximising her musical knowledge through instrumental studies, studying both piano and violin for a short time. In the following years, her number one passion stepped out of the limelight and graciously gave way to Law Studies.
Since 2018 she has been studying Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.
Her passion for opera, even if it is no longer her top professional priority in terms of career, it has most definitely become her priority during her free time. Wanting to experience the best of both worlds and extend her musical horizons, she regularly attends opera performances throughout Romania and abroad.
With OPERA Charm Magazine, Alice aims to nurture her creative side to help it flourish and bloom and to discover, alongside the magazine’s readers, the fascinatingly complex world of opera.
Currently, she is an LL.M. in Business Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.
Oana Zamfir is a second year MA student at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts, at the Department of Musicology.
She studied violin for 12 years at the “Stefan Luchian” High School of Art in Botosani, later focusing on the theoretical aspects of music. In 2019 she completed her bachelor studies in Musicology as a student of the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima” in Cluj-Napoca. Her research during 2018-2019 brought to the forefront elements of the archaic ritual within works of composers who activated during the communist period, giving her the opportunity to start a research internship at the “Carl von Ossietzky” University in Germany. In this context, she recorded conversations with members of the Sophie Drinker Institute in Bremen, and had access to documents directly from the Myriam Marbé archive.
Since 2019 she has been a teacher of Music Education and Theoretical Music Studies, making full use of interactive methods in the musical training of students and working, at the same time, with the children’s choir founded in the first year of her activity.
Her interests include pursuing a degree in interior design in 2020.
Alexandru Suciu inherited his passion for art growing up in a family of several generations of musicians. He began his musical studies at the “Augustin Bena” School of Music in Cluj, where he studied piano and guitar. Even though his main study direction was philological, his passion for music prevailed. He began his academical journey at the Faculty of Letters of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University, studying Comparative literature and English. He continued by studying Opera Singing at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy. He also graduated the Musical Education section, followed by Artistic Directing at the Musical Performing Arts department.
His multidisciplinary education opened the doors towards research, which is seen both through his participation in national and international conferences and symposia, such as the Salzburg Easter School PhD-forum, organized by the Salzburg Universität or the Silesian Meeting of Young Scholars, organized by the Institute of English at the University of Silesia, as well as the collaboration with Opera Charm Magazine.
During his student years, he won several prizes, including the Grand Prize at the “Paul Constantinescu” National Musical Interpretation Competition, the Romanian Composers and Musicologists’ Union Prize at the same competition, the First Prize and the Schubert Prize at the “Ada Ulubeanu” Competition.
He further developed his artistic skills by specializing in courses and masterclasses held by personalities such as Vittorio Terranova, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Marian Pop, Ines Salazar, Riccardo Zanellato, Paolo Bosisio, Valentina Farcaș and Manuel Lange in contexts such as the Internationale Sommerakademie für Operngesang Deutschlandsberg, Corso Internazionale di Canto Lirico I.M.C. Licata or the Europäische Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Montepulciano. Besides his activity on-stage, he currently teaches Opera Singing Didactics, and Pedagogical Practice within the Department for Teacher Education and Training at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy.
Cristina is a 24 year-old Romanian soprano & a student at the National University of Music Bucharest, where she pursues the MA program in Vocal Performance.
She made her debut in Pamina from “Die Zauberflöte” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at only 19 years old at the Bucharest National Opera House, as a member of the Ludovic Spiess Experimental Opera Studio. Over the years she made her debut in roles such as Contessa d’Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Mimì & Musetta (La Bohème), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte) in her university’s opera productions.
Her passion and experience extends in the field of choral music, too.
She has been part of our dream team since the fall of 2021. For a good period of time she took care of OPERA Charm’s social media and took you on the monthly journey through the history of opera through our Legends rubric – and a few times through the Theaters around the World rubric.
Her little soul rubric – from 2021 to present – is definitely the Conductors of the Future, where, every month, she gives you the chance to meet a young star of the world of conducting and, of course, to find out what’s the most charming feature of opera in these artists’ views.
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