Angela Gheorghiu

Angela Gheorgiu is a Romanian soprano in demand the world over for leading roles in French and Italian operas, mostly of the nineteenth century. Her singing and career are spectacular in their own right, but Gheorghiu has gained an added measure of fame and publicity from her partnership with her husband, the tenor Roberto Alagna, which whom she performs frequently; they are the world of opera's best-known power couple.
Gheorghiu had success very quickly after her graduation from the Bucharest Academy in 1990, but her international career shifted into gear at England's Covent Garden, which engaged her as Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni in 1992, and then as Mimi in Puccini's La bohème the same year. She received enormous critical praise for her singing there, and that house has continued to be a cornerstone of her career. In particular, her 1994 Violetta in La traviata was considered one of the finest performances of that role in many years. Gheorgiu quickly obtained a contract with Decca, for whom she has recorded Donizetti's L'elisir d'Amore, Puccini's La bohème, and an album called My World; her many recordings with Alagna are mostly on EMI, and include Bizet's Carmen, Verdi's Il trovatore and Puccini's La rondine. Since 1998 she has recorded exclusively for EMI, and has added Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Massenet's Werther, and an album of Verdi duets, Verdi per due, with Alagna and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. At the turn of the new century, Gheorghiu was continuing to add new operas to her repertory, including Luisa Miller, Pagliacci, Faust, Lucia di Lammermoor, La sonnambula, Tosca, Lucrezia Borgia, and Simon Boccanegra. ~ All Music Guide, All Music Guide