Violeta Urmana debuts as Aida at Milan's La Scala

Finally found her true voice

Violeta Urmana will sing in the opening premiere at La Scala in Milan on December 7, making her debut as Aida in Verdi's opera of the same name. Riccardo Chailly will conduct and living legend Franco Zeffirelli (83) is directing.
For Violeta Urmana, who has appeared regularly at the Teatro alla Scala since her debut there in 1994 as Fricka in The Valkyrie, Aida is her fourth role debut this year, a year which has been dominated by Italian opera. She first gave Norma in Dresden, then Elisabetta (Don Carlo) in Turin and Gioconda at the Met, three top roles for a soprano. The Dresden audience rewarded her debut as Norma in March with a standing ovation and the critics gave her excellent reviews attesting both to her skilful mastering of the bel canto style and the emotional depth of her musical performance.

Elisabetta was an even greater challenge. This was not just a role debut; Violeta Urmana had to sing in competition as it were to her own fame in the role of Eboli, since she had been acclaimed as the leading singer of that role on all the major stages of the world. The success of her change of roles was impressive and the critics praised her with one voice, not just for her brilliant singing, but also for the mature interpretation, the fine sensitivity of Elisabetta's profound emotional torment. Indeed, one female critic more or less summed it up by stating laconically: "Violeta Urmana has really found her true voice!"

The task of playing the role of Aida, which she will sing for the first time in full in December, is something that has been on her mind for five years, when after a performance of Il Trovatore in Milan she decided to change from mezzo-soprano to soprano. She first rehearsed the arias and the final duet, which take the singer to the very heights of the soprano range. Violeta Urmana had something of a dress rehearsal for the role last autumn at the Vienna Staatsoper, when she sang the whole of Act III of the opera as part of an anniversary concert. The recordings of that concert that have been released on both CD and DVD are a very promising taste of what the audience can expect at her Milan debut.

Performances of AIDA at the Teatro alla Scala
Premiere: December 7, 2006
and on December 10, 14, 17, 22 and January 9 and 12, 2007

Ruth Wischmann - Media Relations
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This release was published on openPR.