Yesterday, I posted about Romania’s most celebrated composer, George Enescu, on his birthday. Today, I share the sad news that one of Romania’s most renowned singers, the soprano Ileana Cotrubaș, has died.
Cotrubaș cracked the big time the old-fashioned way. Musical precocity and hard work led to engagements at the Bucharest Opera. Vocal competitions got her noticed abroad. She continued to hone her craft at Oper Frankfurt and Vienna State Opera. She also sang in Brussels, Hamburg, Berlin, Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, and Chicago.
It’s hard, then, to understand why some of her online biographies attribute her “international breakthrough” to her response to an emergency request in January 1975 for her to substitute for an indisposed Mirelli Freni – at the suggestion of Luciano Pavarotti, no less – in “La bohème” at La Scala. Big shoes to fill, in any case! She flew from her home, then in Kent (U.K.), to Milan, arriving at the theater 15 minutes before curtain. She did her makeup on the flight. Her performance as Mimì wound up enchanting both critics and audience.
We’ve all heard this kind of story. Cotrubaș was an overnight success twenty years in the making.
She made her Met debut, also as Mimì, in 1977, opposite José Carreras. Two of her Met characterizations, of Gilda (“Rigoletto”) and Violetta (“La traviata”) – a role for which she was particularly acclaimed – were televised. She also recorded her Violetta with Carlos Kleiber.
At least twice, she stormed out of productions over disagreements with her stage directors. I suspected she would not have been happy in this decadent era of Regietheater. Reading more about her, I learn that I am right.
Ileana Cotrubaș retired from public singing in 1990. She died today in Bucharest at the age of 87. Listen to her Mimì and try not to get a lump in your throat.
R.I.P.