“Undoubtedly one of the greatest sopranos of her generation…”

Fanfare, October 2014

TEODORA GHEORGHIU
SOPRANO

Sometimes a singer’s destiny catches up with them. For the Romanian soprano Teodora Gheorghiu that moment occured courtesy of Jose Carreras, at the Julian Gayarre International Singing Competition. She had not won and Carreras, who was on the jury that year, was outraged. He approached her and told her that in his opinion she had deserved the prize, and insisted on giving her a scholarship equivalent to the prize money, from his own pocket. To have such a great tenor make such a gesture meant the world to the young soprano. “It was the first time that someone had told me I had a future as a singer”, she says. Her path was set.

But artistic destiny is usually rooted in nature. To this day she often feels singing to be a spiritual act – “it starts in the very core of you and pours out”.

After a series of Music competition prizes – among which notably the Queen Elisabeth Competition – and having won the Herbert von Karajan scholarship, she made her debut at the Vienna Staatsoper, still only 25 years old, and joined the company as a principal artist from 2007-2010.

She describes the experience of singing in the top flight and working with such colleagues as Juan Diego Florez, Neil Shicoff, Leo Nucci, Ramon Vargas, Seiji Ozawa, Adam Fischer, Marco Armiliato, Bertrand de Billy, John Axelrod and Franz Welser-Möst among others now in one word, “joy”. Soon the bel canto soprano was being recognised as one of the world’s most exciting young talents.

When she decided to leave Vienna in 2010, this time to spread her wings for a freelance career, conductor Christophe Rousset approached her with an idea for her first recording, an homage to the 18th-century soprano Anna De Amicis. The resulting album, on the Harmonia Mundi-distributed Aparté label, included mostly premiere recordings of arias by Mozart, Gluck, Borghi, Cafaro and Mysliveček and was named “Disc of the Month” by International Record Review (which praised Gheorghiu’s “stunning vocalism”) and by Opera magazine, and was BBC Radio Three’s “Disc of the Week” for 3 consecutive weeks.

With all this success, her approach to her art is about as far from the stereotypical bel canto diva’s as it is possible to get. “I will always try to be an honest artist, to serve the art, not the opposite,” says Gheorghiu, “I don’t want to put myself in the middle.”

Thus, one can understand very well that Teodora Gheorghiu’s love of music and singing is not limited to opera alone.  Many times throughout her career she has given Lieder recitals. In 2013 she released her second Album Art Nouveau featuring Lieder by Strauss, Zemlinsky, Ravel and Respighi as exemplary expressions of this European Jugendstil Art movement in music.

Teodora Gheorghiu was born in Romania. She played the flute before focussing on singing. She studied at the Academia de Muzică Gheorghe Dima in Cluj-Napoca and went on to participate in several competitions, including the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition and the Julián Gayarre International Singing Competition. She later elaborated her vocal training with David Jones and Nelly Miricioiu.

Teodora made her debut in 2003 at the Romanian National Opera, Bucharest, singing the role of the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Soon after, she was invited to appear at several European opera houses, such as La Monnaie in Brussels, the Opéra national de Lorraine in Nancy, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, and various Swiss theatres, including the Luzerner Theater, the Grand Théâtre de Genève and the Opéra de Lausanne. In 2007, Teodora was engaged as a member of the ensemble of the Wiener Staatsoper, where she continued to sing regularly until 2010. In 2014 she made her UK debut at Glyndebourne, singing the role of Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, performance which has been also recorded on DVD. Her first album, “Arias for Anna de Amicis” alongside conductor Christophe Rousset was recorded in 2011. Her second, of Lieder in duet with pianist Jonathan Aner was released in 2012.

Recent engagements led Teodora to Romania, France, Spain, Switzerland and Japan. They encompass vocal-symphonic repertoire and roles such as Contessa (Le nozze di Figaro), Mimì (La Bohème), Violetta Valéry (La Traviata) and Nedda (Pagliacci).

Below you can open/download Teodora Gheorghiu’s biography in PDF version.

Clicking a button will open a PDF file inside your browser, then you can save it on your device.