B: Hello! It’s so nice to see you!

A: So nice to see you too and to be in touch with you all!

B: We could start by asking you how are you dealing with this period.
A: I’m not dealing with it as easily as other seem to. I am very happy for everybody who is not
suffering too much because of it, but for me, what is killing me is the uncertainty. If someone
told me right now that in two months all of this would be over, I’d be fine. I’d know that I have
to stay calm for two months and then everything will be ok again. But the fact that we don’t
actually know what is happening and for how long it is going to be like this is very confusing…

B: How do you keep yourself and your voice in shape in this period?
A: That is really, really hard for me … I have colleagues who just have their voice there, their
instrument is always ready. They don’t sing for two weeks but can go directly on stage and sing
like gods. Well, that is not my case. For me, if five days pass without singing, it feels like I am
starting from the very beginning. So, this is a big challenge right now and I am also the worst
combination, because I need to practice, but I need good conditions for it. For example, I can’t
practice at home, I have this mental blockage. I don’t want to bother anyone, I don’t want my
neighbors to think „why is she screaming for two hours in a row?!”. Whenever I find a situation
where I feel isolated a bit, I take advantage of the moment and I sing. That’s kind of my silver
lining. It may sound egoistic or strange, but this is another occasion that showed and taught me
how important singing is for me. When you are caught in it and just go from rehearsal to
rehearsal and from performance to performance, you can forget how much you actually enjoy it
and how important it is to you. This crazy situation is a little reminder…

B: Are you among those whose performances have been cancelled because of this situation?
A: Not yet. Since the beginning of March I’ve been in Munich for the rehearsals of Marina
Abramovich’s project, The Seven Deaths of Maria Callas, and we have started when the
situation was not as bad as it is right now, so we got to rehearse a bit. We are prepared to jump
back in whenever the situation gets a little better. So, we didn’t cancel it. We are hoping it will
not be cancelled, but there might be some modifications to it. Fingers crossed and not only for
this… We all want to turn back into the theaters. We all suffer from the financial point of view,
but we also have the human aspect of it, the desire to do something so bad and not to be able to.
Anyway, I keep thinking that there are so many people with much, much bigger problems at this
moment. As long as we are healthy and manage to keep our spirits up we can consider ourselves
blessed.

B: What is this show, The Seven Deaths of Maria Calas about?

A: Well, Marina Abramovich is this fantastic performance artist and she has admired Maria
Callas for her entire life. She really has an obsession with her. It is easy to understand why,
because La Callas was such a fascinating person, a fascinating artist. Last year, I’ve read in
Marina Abramovich’s autobiography that she started planning 31 years ago to have a project
dedicated to Maria Callas. Her initial idea was to do a film with seven different scenes of death
of the characters that Maria Callas sang during her career, the most representative ones, such as
Norma, Lucia, Traviata and so on. Each role, each death scene will be directed by a different
famous stage director. So, she tried to make this project happen, but it wasn’t possible for one
reason or another. Then, she decided that nothing would be better than staging a live
performance about Maria Callas. Of course for us, the singers, it’s very humbling. In the first day
of rehearsals we have been told „please, don’t try to imitate Maria Callas, you don’t have to sing
like her” and my reaction was „it’s not like I’ve been even daring to think about it, you know”
(laughs). I am honored, but I’d never go thinking that far. Marina is with us on stage and there
are 7 different singers, 6 sopranos and 1 mezzosoprano, and each of us performs one of the death
scenes of the characters that La Callas embodied in her career. I am looking forward to seeing
the final result, to putting everything together – the music, the lights, the videos, the stage
direction. The premiere was actually scheduled for April 11th, with four performances. It is
probably to happen either only on Livestreaming, or the date will be postponed for when the
things will turn back to normal. We are also supposed to go on tour with this show, to Florence,
Paris, Berlin and Athens. Let’s hope we’ll be able to.

B: How about a coming back to Cluj?

A: I was scheduled for the Opera Ball at the National Opera House in Cluj, but then I’ve got so
sick. That’s part of our life, you know… I have finally learnt that health doesn’t depend on us.
There are moments when you just have to accept you are only human. I was really looking
forward to this event… Now there are invitations and we are discussing coming back. I am
constantly in touch with the theaters in Romania and I am always happy to come back.

B: What are your plans for the next season?

A: I am debuting La Sonnambula next season and also I Capuleti e I Montecchi. I will return to
Donna Anna, and I will sing Lucia in Deutsche Oper am Rhein and Bayerische Staatsoper, and I
am very happy for that.

Audience question: who would you say has influenced your life and career the most?
A: Going way back, I have to say that my life and my career were influenced by the principal of
the school back in my home town. I hope she knows that. She is this super strong woman,
extremely smart, very ambitious and encouraging me a lot. I think this is where the roots of my
ambition are. When we are talking about singers, even if I’ve never met Miss Zeani, I have lots
of respect for her and a huge part of this respect is for who she is as a person. We only keep in
touch via phone calls, but she was to me from the first second so wonderful, so warm, so
generous, so encouraging! Maybe I am wrong, but I can’t appreciate a person only for the career.
The career has to go together with a beautiful personality. If it doesn’t, I can listen to someone’s
recordings or performances, but I can’t see them as role models. Also, I can say that my career
truly started after Operalia, and through it, Maestro Domingo influenced greatly my future. First
of all because Operalia opens so many doors for singers and then, we’ve had so many concerts
together where he was either conducting or singing, and so I had the chance to see how it’s done
from one of the greatest. And also his wife, who is a wonderful strong woman - we have spent
two amazing months together working on Traviata at LA Opera. I can also say without thinking
twice that my managing team after Operalia – Jack Mastroianni and Stepan Atamian – had a
huge influence not only on my career, but also on my mindset, in finding my inner voice and my
artistical self-esteem, which didn’t exist much before.

Audience question: About your upcoming debut as Adina in L’Elisir d’amore at the Staatsoper
Berlin.
A: That is still on, it’s not cancelled yet. It should be on May 1st. I am working on it, I just
received the musical cuts, so… So far, so good. Fingers crossed! That is another interesting
aspect of this period: how do you prepare a role debut when you’re locked in the house with no
piano and no pianist? This caught me on the road. I’m not home where I’d have my piano and
everything would be much easier. (but… it’s ok.)

Audience questions: What breathing exercises would you recommend?

A: I have to admit that I don’t do separately breathing exercises, but I try to always be very
aware of my breath while vocalizing. The thing that I would do extra is using these little devices
you can find online, that makes you breath in it constantly while it is opposing resistance. That’s
the only thing that you can: learning how breath out economically and constantly, developing
your muscles and your lung capacity. There’s also the straw in the glass of water exercises that
you can use. For me, practicing arias and different musical bits that are challenging helps a lot
with that. I have to say, I am not a big fan of breathing-only exercises, but it’s not like I’m
ignoring it. Breathing and support are the foundation of a good singing technique.

B: But how about your warming-up process?

A: Well, my warming-up routine is pretty short at this point. It used to be much longer before,
but as my technique evolved, I felt how my voice was getting ready to sing with less vocalizing.
Now I am warming-up for about 5 minutes, preferably as close as possible to going on stage.
Warming-up an hour before the performance and then keeping the voice like that doesn’t work
for me. Because of the fact that for me the homogeneity of the voice throughout the registers is
very important, I start by doing humming exercises with a little bit of glissando/portamento on an
octave interval, trying to make the whole voice sound the same. Doing this exercise, I try to
involve all the muscles, to be aware of everything that is happening in the body, not only
warming up the resonators, the higher part of the „instrument”. The body has to be involved in
every sound. I am also focusing on keeping the sinuses wide. When I’ve started singing, I used to
sing as a soubrette, very lightly, focusing only on the upper part of the voice and considering that
it’s enough. But people kept telling me „that is not your voice, you’re not singing your full
voice” and then I realized it’s true, of course not by myself, but with the help of my vocal coach,
and I’ve found all these new resonance spaces, a whole new dimension. This is how I think about
singing: it’s a huge dimension. You have to always imagine that you are singing for a 2000 seats
hall. But one with a very good acoustic, otherwise you will start pushing (laughs). The second
exercise that I do is a fifth, using the I vowel because helps me a lot finding the height of the
sound, and then the O/U vowels to keep it wide enough. And then I have one more that I choose
depending on how I feel in a certain day, probably a 9th scale to activate my coloratura. Again,
it’s very important to be constant through the registers. So I start from the lower register and go
until the sopracuto. No matter what I sing, I always warm up until E flat/E. If I have a lot of
adrenaline even higher (laughs). I have received so many questions about vocal technique on my
page and I keep saying that I don’t feel like I should give advice and I don’t want to do this. But
if you like what you hear and how I sound, I can only tell you what I am focusing on. As I said,
it’s very important that my voice is constant, from the lower to the highest register. The thing
that I have learnt in the last years and made a huge difference in my singing is how much
importance, in terms of support and sound position, should be given to the middle and the lower
register. From the moment I’ve learnt how to sing the low and the middle register, the acuto and
supracuto improved 100%. I have also learnt that the support of the sound is a much more active
work than I’ve thought before. It’s literally a nonstop controlled system. I also think that singing
should be kept simple. If someone tells you two thousand things about what you should be doing
with your tongue and with your nose, your forehead and with your cheekbones, that might
confuse you a lot and you might lose from sight the basic, important things.

Audience question: Which role of those you have already performed is the closest to yourself?
A: Lucia represents a very special thing for me, because basically I found and discovered my
voice with Lucia – that is when the things started going better and better for me. It was my very
first belcanto role and it opened for me the door to belcanto. So, Lucia will always have a very
special place. I also feel that La Traviata is very close to my soul, because there are so many
deep feelings, from the purest happiness to the depths of despair. For me, La Traviata is like a
whole life time compressed in two hours and a half, which emotionally is a lot to take in, and
vocally a challenge to express. Singing Violetta is such a challenge. First of all, you are on stage
almost non-stop. That’s the hardest part, to learn how to use your energy and your voice wisely.
And then it has a lower tessitura than what I used to sing before, so I had to develop in a whole
new direction in order to be able to sing Violetta. It is one of the most challenging things that I
have ever done so far. It is on the top 2 alongside with I Puritani, but I think I Puritani is easier
for me because it’s Belcanto and it sits higher. Violetta offers so many satisfactions, there’s so
much drama. Although, I have decided to be very careful with how many performances I will
sing and how often, because there are some moments that are so dramatic that, if you’re really
immersed into the character and you’re 100% dedicated to the moment, are very dangerous for
the voice. I’ve had evenings when I said: „this was amazing, but I shouldn’t do this every two
days”.

B: Still about the repertoire, have you thought about going in the Verdi heroines direction or not
yet?
A: Not yet - not further than Gilda and Violetta anyways, which I have in my repertoire. I have a
problem with nowadays tendency of singing over Fach. I have refused plenty of roles that I think
should come for me in about 5 years. I am focusing on keeping my voice flexible, in keeping my
high notes. It’s not that I want to sing until I am 60, but it’s about offering the best roles to my
voice to shine in. I don’t want anyone thinking during one of my performances “why didn’t she
wait a bit longer to sing this?!” I think that would ruin both my experience as a singer, and the
audience’s pleasure to hear me. Now I am 32. In about 4-5 years, a small change will probably
naturally come in my repertoire. It’s also that I have barely started singing on the important
stages and I want people to hear my Lucia and my Elvira and so on. These are roles that are very,
very special for me and I don’t want to give them up so easily.