Opera Colorado Ovation Adina Nitescu, lyric-spinto
Since her operatic debut in Leipzig, Germany in 1993 where she sang Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Romanian soprano Adina Nitescu has moved audiences with her intensely heartfelt interpretations of leading Italian lyric-spinto repertoire. Yet her ability to delve deeply into these roles took root at the tender age of three, long before she could have truly understood the meaning behind the passionate arias for which she has become known and beloved.
“My mother, who wanted to be a singer but couldn't study it for political reasons in Romania, took me to La Traviata in Bucharest,” she recalled, “I was so enchanted by the beauty of both the music and the voices that I developed at a very young age the wish to become an opera singer.” It also helped that she grew up surrounded by classical music to include personal performances by an aunt and uncle who both played the violin. “My uncle,” she said, “even used to play lullabies for my brother and me on his violin when we were babies.”
When she realized that she had inherited her family's talent, Nitescu studied voice and piano at a specialized high school for music, after which she attended the Academia de Arte “George Enescu” in Bucharest. “If you ask me about a mentor,” she said, “I can say that my teacher in the Conservatory, Professor Georgeta Stoleriu, was even more than that. She not only trained my voice, she helped me a lot to get out of Romania for different competitions.” The two remain close to this day; Stoleriu even stood as witness for Nitescu’s wedding.
Her first public appearance in international competitions came in Cardiff at the Singer of the World Competition out of which she won a three month personal scholarship awarded by Sir Georg Solti to study in London. More competitions were to follow. In 1992, she won the Belvedere Competition in Vienna then went on to win the Pavarotti Competition held in Philadelphia. She sang her first Mimì in La Bohème at the National Theater in Bucharest soon after making her debut in Leipzig as Donna Anna. Why has she focused on Italian opera in particular? She said her heart has always been with Italian music, and that Puccini holds a special place. “He has the noblesse of Verdi's melodies and sound,” she explained, “but the characters in his operas are even closer to real life. And with the years, it turned out that the color of my voice and my own character suit best in Puccini operas. So it was the combination of the music, the human aspect in his operas, and a certain vocal compatibility that made me specialize in this wonderful composer.”
For her personally, Madame Butterfly has a timeless quality that she finds as relevant today as it had to have been a hundred years ago. She said, “As long as there will be richer and poorer countries, and as long as men, and not only soldiers, from richer countries travel, search and find relationships that they won't take as seriously as the women involved, stories like Madame Butterfly will be relevant.”
When preparing for the intensity of the role of Cio-Cio-San, Nitescu said that the strength and the passion come almost entirely from the story, and that she even tries to find aspects of the role that are comparable to her own character. “I prepare with a lot of discipline before a production. I try to stay as fit as possible, I work out, I study the music, voice technique, and I read books to learn about the background of an opera, but,” she said, “on stage, I become the part. I identify with it. I live the passions and don't really feel how tiring it is. I obviously have to keep a certain inner distance to avoid getting exhausted and or even damaging my voice by losing control.”
When she’s not preparing for a performance, Nitescu, who lives in Berlin with her husband and voice coach, German bass Markus Hollop, loves to be outside in nature and to cook and decorate; a kind of meditation for her that takes her mind off the stresses of the job. When asked how it is to work with her husband she said that it’s not difficult because they’ve been able to avoid issues with competition and authority – problems many couples in their situation complain about. “Of course,” she said, “I don't always like what he tells me and we would start to discuss, but that would be the same with any other teacher. I think it works so well because we never decided at a defined moment that he would coach me; it was a process over the years. It actually has many advantages. We understand each other, he is extremely patient, he knows me and he loves me.”