Author:

by Sonia Ilincăi

Ileana Cotrubaș is a romanian soprano. Her career developed between 1960-1990. She was admired for her beautiful light voice, for her dramatic talent and for her adaptation of singing in a lot of languages.

She was born on 9 June 1939 in Romania in a family where the traditions of music already existed, so she grew up in a space where the music was always present, her father being a tenor in an amateur choir. Ileana’s musical career started at an early age when she started being a member of the children choir of Romanian Radio, a big thing back in those times. She was nine years old back then, and when she was eleven years old she already sung as a soloist. All these contexts and her abilities were an important point of decision for her family because they took her to Bucharest, the capital of Romania, to study music in a more profonde way. She started the Special School of Music, which was a vocational school and from that moment Ileana’s musical activity started to bloom.

Her first appearance on the opera stage was in 1964 in Bucharest in the role of Yniold from Claude Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Then her repertoire started to grow with roles like Oscar in Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto and Blondchen in Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

Continuing the thread of the soprano’s life, she won a very important competition in Holand where she was the winner of the First Prize at all the categories: opera, lied and oratorio. All these Prizes and a wonderful debut in the role of Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte assured her a great success in the german theaters. The next years she had a lot of great debuts in the most important theaters of the world. So, the year of 1969 took her to the United Kingdom where she sung Mélisande, and in 1970 she signed a contract with Vienna State Opera where she had the chance to debut in important roles like Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata, Mimi in Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème and Sophie in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. In 1971 she had her debut at the Royal Opera House in the role of Tatiana in Piotr Ilici Thaicovski’s Evgheni Oneghin, in 1973 she had her american debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago with Mimi. After all these great successes in 1975 came another wonderful one when she was called last minute at Teatro alla Scala to replace Mirella Freni in La bohème in Mimi’s role. Her beautiful interpretation was received with a lot of entuziasm from the Scala’s public and also from the critics. Mimi’s role was also with her for her debut at The Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1977 with José Carreras and Renata Scotto as stage parteners. In this iconic opera house she sung five roles: Mimi, Violetta, Gilda, Ilia in Mozart’s Idomeneo, Tatiana and Michaela in Georges Bizet’s Carmen. Besides all these great debuts the list of her roles is bigger than that, her repertoire being as rich as her artistic sense.

After a delightful career Cotrubaș retired from the stage activity and she continued to value her artistic gift by being a voice teacher, preparing the young generation of opera singers for the magic of the stage.

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Alice Lechner

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

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

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 Fieraru

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.

BIANCA L. NICA

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Ileana Cotrubas

Alice Lechner

Oana Zamfir

Alexandru Suciu

Cristina Fieraru

BIANCA L. NICA