Mariana Nicolesco, a great voice of our time, brings Europe to Romania

Celebrated soprano Mariana Nicolesco left her native country, Romania, in the 70’s, with a scholarship she won in a national contest to study voice at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome. Her superb dark voice, with an enormous extention and her solid musical background - she studied violin from age 6 to 18 - brought her immediately to general attention. Still in the Conservatory, she is the Page in Verdi’s Don Carlos at Teatro dell’Opera in Rome in Luchino Visconti’s last production. Fascinated by the stage and the company, Cesare Siepi, Martina Arroyo, Grace Bumbry, she misses

her replica: - Il Re (The King). She laughs, with her laugh that became legendary, and begs Visconti’s pardon. Not disturbed at all by the incident, the great director decides: - This girl should be on stage all the time. She is a presence. This presence will soon be applauded and get ovations all around the world: unpaired Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni or Elettra in Idomeneo by Mozart, Queen of belcanto in Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda and Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, Elisabeth I in Roberto Devereux or Maria di Rohan, she sang from La Scala in Milan to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, from Salzburg Festival to Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo, with Muti, Giulini, Maazel, Sawallisch, Ozawa in productions signed by Strehler, Ronconi, Ponnelle or Jonathan Miller.

I brought to the West a part of the soul of my native country. Time has come to bring to Romania the best of the European great traditions of the art of singing that I inherited from my masters and from the great artists I sang with on the most prestigious opera stages. The result is extraordinary and I could not be happier». In her speech preceding the concert Europe sings with us, Mariana Nicolesco pointed out the great ideas that inspired Europe and its culture, its ideals of independence and freedom. And it was not by pure chance that this UNESCO Artist for Peace sang herself, gloriously, in the wonderful night of July 28 the soprano part of the Anthem of Europe from Beethoven IXth Symphony.

Press contact: PPS Promotion-Presse-Service, Chris Rabe, EU-Kulturzentrum, D-52391 Vettweiss/Köln, fon 0049-2424-940427, fax 0049-2424-940428, mailto: pps@kfe.de