Teodora Gheorghiu
Sometimes a singer’s destiny catches up with them. For Teodora Gheorghiu, who had spent much of her early life in her native Romania believing she would be a flautist, that moment occured courtesy of Jose Carreras, at the Julian Gayarre International Singing Competition. She had not won and Carreras, who was on the jury that year, was outraged. He approached her and told her that in his opinion she had deserved the prize, and insisted on giving her a scholarship equivalent to the prize money, from his own pocket. To have such a great tenor make such a gesture meant the world to the young soprano. “It was the first time that someone had told me I had a future as a singer”, she says. Her path was set.

But artistic destiny is usually rooted in nature, and as a baby Gheorghiu had sung before she could speak. Then the flute came along when she was 12, she won competitions and studied seriously for a career. “But at the same time I was in a children’s choir” she recalls, “and that felt so natural, whereas playing the flute in concert I would get so nervous. Singing on stage and mixing my voice with those of the other girls was pure pleasure.” Her soprano developed fast, until it no longer blended with her friends and the conductor of the choir told her she must study singing and became her first vocal teacher. She started slowly, with folk and then sacred music – Bach, Telemann, Händel (to this day she often feels singing to be a spiritual act – “it starts in the very core of you and pours out”) – until she finally discovered opera.

After the Carreras gift, another contest (the Enescu Competition, in which she did win a prize) so impressed the directors of the Romanian Opera and the Vienna Staastoper that there and then they both invited her to join their companies. After her debut in Vienna, still only 25 years old, she decided she needed more preparation before joining such a major company, so (with a few more good wins under her belt, notably the Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Herbert von Karajan scholarship), she joined the Lucerne Theatre. After two years there under chief conductor John Axelrod, she felt ready to return to Vienna. She re-auditioned and won a principal artist’s contract, and was back at the Staatsoper the following season.

This time she stayed, singing a wide array of leading roles, including Adele (Die Fledermaus), the Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte), Nanetta (Falstaff), Fiakermilli (Arabella), Adina (L’Elisir d’Amore), Elvira (L’Italiana in Algeri), Sophie (Werther), and Eudoxie (La Juive). More important, this time she felt ready. “The time in Lucerne was very important for me,a wonderful period. I started to know myself, to try things out on the stage, understanding how far you can push things, and when it gets too risky. For a stage like the Vienna Staatsoper you need the finished product, and I returned much more secure to sing big roles.”

She describes the experience of singing in the top flight now in one word, “joy”. And although she credits the top-flight colleagues with whom she has worked, among them Juan Diego Florez, Neil Shicoff, Leo Nucci, Ramon Vargas, Seiji Ozawa, Adam Fischer, Marco Armiliato, Bertrand de Billy and Franz Welser-Möst (also another famous Romanian soprano, Leontina Vaduva, with whom she now sometimes studies as well as sings) – “with colleagues like these, it’s impossible not to sing well” – the bel canto soprano was by now being recognised as one of the world’s most exciting young talents. Other successes have included the role of The Italian Singer in Capriccio at the Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro) at the Antibes Festival.

When she decided to leave Vienna in 2010, this time to spread her wings for a freelance career, conductor Christophe Rousset approached her with an idea for her first recording, an homage to the 18th-century soprano Anna De Amicis. The resulting album, on the Harmonia Mundi-distributed Aparté label, included mostly premiere recordings of arias by Mozart, Gluck, Borghi, Cafaro and Myslivecek and was named “Disc of the Month” by International Record Review (which praised Gheorghiu’s “stunning vocalism”) and by Opera magazine, and was BBC Radio Three’s “Disc of the Week” for three consecutive weeks.

With all this success, her approach to her art is about as far from the stereotypical bel canto diva’s as it is possible to get. “I will always try to be an honest artist, to serve the art, not the opposite,” says Gheorghiu, “I don’t want to put myself in the middle.”

Jonathan Aner
has performed as a soloist with Israel’s leading orchestras, including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta. Further engagements as a soloist followed in Germany (Berliner Philharmonie), Italy and China, where he recently performed at the closing concert of the NCPA (National Centre for the Performing Arts) May Festival. He has won international prizes at the Città di Senigallia International Piano Competition in Italy, the International Schubert Competition and the Ben-Haim Competition.

Described as “a chamber musician par excellence” (Frankfurter Rundschau) Jonathan Aner is a member of the Brillaner Duo with clarinetist Shirley Brill and of the Oberon Trio. He has collaborated with such leading artists as violist Tabea Zimmermann, the concertmasters of the Berliner Philharmoniker and with the Vogler and the Jerusalem String Quartets. As a former member of the Tel Aviv Trio, he has won prizes at the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition in Australia, the Città di Trapani and the Vittorio Gui International Chamber Music Competitions in Italy, the Joseph Joachim and the “Erst-Klassik” Competitions in Germany, and the European Chamber Music Competition in France.

Mr. Aner performed recitals and chamber music concerts in such prestigious concert halls as the Berliner Konzerthaus, Carnegie Hall, Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Wallace Collection in London, Conde Duque in Madrid, Dom Muzyki in Moscow, Tivoli Hall in Copenhagen, as well as in Asia, Australia and in his native Israel. He has taken part in the Bergen, Schleswig-Holstein, Rheingau, Heidelberg and Radio France Festivals. In addition, he has participated in the Deutsche Grammophon’s “Yellow Lounge”. Mr. Aner is a graduate of the Musikhochschule Hannover where he studied with Professor Arie Vardi, of the Musikhochschule Lübeck as a student of Professor Konrad Elser and of the New England Conservatory in Boston. In addition, he has worked closely with pianists Murray Perahia and András Schiff. Since 2010 Jonathan Aner is a professor of chamber music at the Academy of Music “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin.