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INTRODUCTION
Nino Machaidze is one of today’s most captivating sopranos, gracing the world’s most prestigious opera stages, from the Metropolitan Opera to La Scala and the Salzburg Festival. With a career spanning iconic roles in La Traviata, Rigoletto, Manon, and Thaïs, she continues to enchant audiences with her dazzling vocal artistry and magnetic stage presence. As she takes on exciting new challenges, we explore her journey, inspirations, and the passion that drives her extraordinary career. In a conversation with Bianca L. Nica, Nino talked about her journey & her repertoire, about what it takes for an opera singer to achieve success, what are the main challenges for opera singers nowadays, about the importance of social media for an artist & how she find a balance between her international career and personal life.
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Nino Machaidze is one of today’s most brilliant artists, having made important international debuts at such theaters as the Metropolitan Opera, Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Berlin State Opera, Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Theatre Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels, Opera National de Paris, Royal Opera House-Covent Garden, and Los Angeles Opera. Engagements for the 2016/17 season include Mimì in La Bohème at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette at the Royal Opera House of Muscat, Desdemona in Otello at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the title role in Thaïs at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Contessa di Folleville in Il viaggio a Reims at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen, and Gilda in Rigoletto at the San Francisco Opera. She also returns to the festival in Pesaro for Le siège de Corinthe. Machaidze’s engagements for the 2015/16 season included Ines in L’Africaine at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Gilda at the Theatre du Capitole in Toulouse, Desdemona in Rossini’s Otello at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, Luisa in Luisa Miller at the Hamburg State Opera, Violetta in La Traviata at the Arena di Verona, and her debut as Mimì at the Los Angeles Opera. In the 2014/15 season, she sang Violetta in La Traviata at the Los Angeles Opera and Hamburg State Opera, La Contessa di Folleville in Il viaggio a Reims at the Dutch National Opera, Micaëla in Carmen at the Teatro alla Scala, the title role in Luisa Miller at the Hamburg State Opera, Donna Fiorilla in Il turco in Italia at the Teatro Regio di Torino, and Ninetta in La gazza ladra at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. Machaidze’s engagements for the 2013/14 season included Adina in L’elisir d’amore at the Teatro Real de Madrid and Wiener Staatsoper, Donna Fiorilla at the Bavarian State Opera, Leïla in Les Pecheurs de Perles at the Teatro Regio di Parma and Teatro Comunale di Modena, and the title role in Thaïs at the Los Angeles Opera. In the 2012/13 season, she sang her first Thaïs at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, opposite Placido Domingo. She then sang Fiorilla in Il turco in Italia at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Juliette at the Wiener Staatsoper and Theatre Royale de La ,Monnaie, and Gilda with Opera di Genova. Nino Machaidze began the 2011/12 season with her debut at Staatsoper Hamburg as Gilda. During the course of the season, she also appeared in Hamburg as the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor and Adina in L’elisir d’amore. She returned to the Los Angeles Opera as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette and then to the Metropolitan Opera to star in the revival of La fille du régiment. In January of 2012, Machaidze made her French operatic debut at Opera National de Paris in Rigoletto, a work she also performed in Las Palmas. In the summer of 2012, she appeared as Musetta in a new production of La Bohème at the Salzburg Festival, where her colleagues included Anna Netrebko and Peter Beczala. A graduate of the Accademia del Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Machaidze appeared at La Scala as Marie in Donizetti’s La fille du régiment in 2007. These performances, followed by her debut at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in the same role, were what launched her international career. In the summer of 2008, Machaidze made a sensational debut at the Salzburg Festival as Juliette ,in the new production of Roméo et Juliette, opposite Rolando Villazon. Other roles in Machaidze’s developing repertoire include Giulietta in I Capuleti ed I Montecchi, the title role in Massenet’s Manon, and Marfa in The Tsar’s Bride. Among her recent engagments: Le siège de Corinthe in Pesaro, Les Pecheurs de Perles in Los Angeles, Guillaume Tell in Palermo, Roméo et Juliette in Karlsruhe, I Pagliacci in Genève Roma and Salerno, Il Barbiere di Siviglia in Verona and Amsterdam, Les contes d’Hoffmann in Naples, Manon in Paris and Wien, La Bohème in Tokyo, Viva la mamma! in Madrid, Armida in Marseille, Luisa Miller in Zurich, Hamburg and Salzburg, Giovanna d’Arco in Rome, La gazza ladra at the Theater An der Wien, La Traviata in Berlin, Naples, Bari and Seville, I Lombardi alla prima Crociata in Monte Carlo, Budapest and Munich.
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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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