Hailed as a “true revelation” by Euro News, Romanian soprano Adela Zaharia was the 2017 first place winner of Operalia.
She made her LA Opera debut in 2018 as Gilda in Rigoletto. In the 2017/18 season, Ms. Zaharia returned to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein ensemble where her roles included the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor, Konstanze in The Abduction from the Seraglio, Gilda in Rigoletto, and the dual role of Fire and the Princess in Suzanne Andrade’s new production of L’enfant et les Sortilèges. She made her Bavarian State Opera debut in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor, her role and house debut as Elisabetta in concert performances of Roberto Devereux at Oper Frankfurt, and also returned to the Komische Oper Berlin as Pamina in The Magic Flute. Additional concert appearances include her debut at the George Enescu Festival, where she performed the mad scene from Iain Bell’s A Harlot’s Progress, a gala concert with Placido Domingo in Guadalajara with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Jalisco, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Arad State Philharmonic in her native Romania.
Ms. Zaharia has been a member of the Deutsche Oper am Rhen ensemble since the 2015/16 season, where she has sung the title role of Lange’s The Snow Queen, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, and Najade in Ariadne auf Naxos. As a former member of the Komische Oper opera studio, she also sang Micaëla in Carmen, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Princess Nicoletta in The Love for Three Oranges, Elsbeth in Offenbach’s Fantasio, and Pamina in Barrie Kosky’s production of The Magic Flute. She has also appeared in Kosky’s production for her debuts at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Bolshoi Theater, the Edinburgh International Festival, and the Shanghai Grand Theater. While studying voice and piano at the Gheorghe Dima Music Academy in her native Romania, Ms. Zaharia sang such roles as Gilda in Rigoletto, Norina in The Elixir of Love, and Musetta in La Boheme. Her concert repertoire includes Carmina Burana, Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Brahms’s Ein deutches Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem, and Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri. She was the recipient of the Grand Prix of the Haricleea Darclée International Competition in 2012.
