Ileana Cotrubaș (1939-2026)

The Romanian soprano Ileana Cotrubaș has died at the age of 87. Cotrubaș was from a musical family and began singing as a child, joining a children's radio choir at the age of nine and quickly becoming one of its leading soloists. She began studies at the Școala Specială de Muzică in Budapest in 1952, and made her stage debut with the Bucharest Opera as Yniold in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande in 1964.

A year later, Cotrubaș won the International Vocal Competition in Hertogenbosch, followed in 1966 by first prize in the voice category at the ARD International Compeition in Munich, after which she went to the Vienna Academy of Music to complete her studies.

Her first major engagement abroad was a three-year contract with the Frankfurt Opera, where she was a principal from 1968 to 1971, and she returned to Debussy in the title role of Mélisande for her Glyndebourne debut in 1969. Her international career soon flourished, and she went on to sing at many of the world's major opera houses, including the Vienna State Opera House, La Scala and Metropolitan Opera. 

Cotrubaș debuted at the Royal Opera House in 1971 as Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, conducted by Georg Solti, with Yvonne Minton as Olga, Victor Braun as Eugene and Robert Tear as Lensky. She became particularly associated with the roles of Violetta in La Traviata (Verdi), Mimi in La Bohème (Puccini), Gilda in Rigoletto (Verdi), Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart). In January 1975, she stood in as Mimi for Mirella Freni at La Scala, reportedly flying from her home in Kent and arriving fifteen minutes before curtain time. The acclaim she received for her interpretation of the role further helped to cement her status.

Cotrubaș made her debut at the MET in that same role in 1977, returning as Gilda for a televised performance of Rigoletto the folllowing season and as Violetta opposite Placido Domingo in the 1980-81 season. 

She was versatile and her repertoire was wide, also including music by Donizetti, Gluck, Leoncavallo, Schubert, Bizet and Mahler amongst others, and later roles included Tytania in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which she performed at Glyndebourne, directed by Peter Hall, who had been responsible for that staging of La Traviata in which she had made her ROH debut.

Following her retirement from public performance in 1990, Cotrubaș devoted considerable time to teaching and working with younger singers.

She leaves behind a considerable legacy of celebrated recordings which offer a precious document of her distinctive lyric voice, intense dramatic involvement and the power which she brought to every role she played, exploring every facet of each character's psychology and vulnerabilities. The recordings she made of La Traviata and Rigoletto, both with Domingo, are amongst the finest made of either opera, and the recording of Cavalli's La Calisto with Janet Baker and James Bowman is a treat, capturing Cotrubaș in a role she sang early in her career, at Glyndebourne.