Teodora Gheorghiu

Teodora Gheorghiu began on the flute in Brașov, where she was born in 1978, and turned to singing at the Gheorghe Dima Academy in Cluj-Napoca. At the Julián Gayarre competition she did not win; José Carreras, sitting on the jury, thought she should have and paid for her further study out of his own pocket — the first time, she has said, that anyone told her she had a future as a singer. A prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition followed, then a debut in 2003 as the Queen of the Night at the Romanian National Opera and, at twenty-five, a first appearance at the Vienna State Opera, whose ensemble she joined from 2007 to 2010 as Adele, Nanetta, Fiakermilli, Adina, Elvira, Sophie and Eudoxie. Her first record, Arias for Anna de Amicis, made with Christophe Rousset in homage to the soprano for whom Mozart wrote Giunia in Lucio Silla, was BBC Radio 3's Disc of the Week three weeks running; a Lieder disc followed in 2012. She sang at La Monnaie and in Nancy, and made her British debut at Glyndebourne in 2014 as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier.