Angela Gheorghiu’s father was a railway engineer, who with his wife encouraged their daughters Angela and Elena in their love of music and singing. Their talents were quickly recognised and when she was fourteen, Angela moved to Bucharest to attend the Enescu Lyceum, where an academic curriculum was combined with musical training. Here she studied piano before commencing vocal tuition with Mia Barbu and then progressing to the Bucharest Academy of Music, Romania’s senior conservatory, where she studied musicianship and languages as well as singing. In the late 1980s Gheorghiu performed Mimì / La Bohème in a student production at the Academy, before graduating with first-class honours in 1990. Her professional operatic stage debut was as Mimì at the Cluj- Napoca Romanian National Opera, the same year in which she was a prizewinner in the International Belvedere Singing Competition in Vienna.

Gheorghiu made her debuts in 1992 at the Vienna State Opera as Adina / L’elisir d’amore and at the Royal Opera House, London as Zerlina / Don Giovanni. Later roles at Vienna included Mimì,
Nanetta / Falstaff and Violetta / La traviata; and at Covent Garden Mimì and Liù / Turandot. In 1993 she first appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, New York as Mimì. During this period she also sang in Brussels (Micaëla / Carmen, 1993), Hamburg (Adina; Mimì, 1995), Bonn (Magda / La rondine, 1995) and Munich (Mimì, 1995); and made guest appearances in Berlin, Montreal, Chicago and Tokyo.

It was in 1994 that Gheorgiu’s international breakthrough occurred. Having sung Nina in Massenet’s Chérubin at Covent Garden, she auditioned there for Sir Georg Solti to sing Violetta in a new production of La traviata. This was broadcast and released on DVD by Decca. At the same time she met her future husband, the French tenor Roberto Alagna, with whom her career became closely linked: in 1996 they sang together in La Bohème at the Met, and at Covent Garden as Micaëla and Don José in Carmen.

Family tragedy struck in 1996 with the death of Gheorghiu’s sister Elena. There soon followed a period of turbulence in Gheorghiu’s career, marked for instance by disagreements with the management of the Met over such issues as the colour of a wig for Micaëla and the sets for La traviata. Despite these onstage problems, her career continued to flourish through her commercial recordings, that of La Bohème with Alagna for EMI winning several awards in 1997. In the same year she and her husband were successful in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at the Met and also appeared to acclaim in L’elisir d’amore, followed by Puccini’s La rondine with the Royal Opera Company in 1998, the year in which she signed an exclusive contract with EMI. In 1999 she sang Suzel / L’amico Fritz in Monte Carlo, again partnered by Alagna.

From 2000 onwards Gheorghiu began to take on more solo work, although she and Alagna appeared together in a film of Tosca which enjoyed considerable success, followed in 2002 by another film, of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. In 2003 she added two further roles to her repertoire, Nedda / Pagliacci and Marguerite / Faust; and in 2010 the Royal Opera Company mounted new productions for her of Tosca (2006) and Adriana Lecouvreur (2010), both of which were well received. A production of La traviata at La Scala, Milan in which she appeared as Violetta was recorded for video in 2007.

On-stage Gheorghiu cuts a glamorous figure, which is matched by her beautiful lyric voice. She concentrates her operatic appearances on those roles in which she can make the greatest impact, while she has sought to explore different areas of the vocal repertoire through her numerous recordings.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Singers, Naxos 8.558097-100).