I first saw the legendary soprano Angela Gheorghiu in the 2011 film version of “Tosca”. Starring opposite the gorgeous young tenor, Jonas Kaufmann, she sizzled, a sultry temptress with fire in her veins. She commanded the stage, as only a diva can, drawing all eyes with every sinuous movement.
Today, I expect her to flounce into the Savoy wearing a gipsy dress, à la Carmen (another seductress she has played to perfection), after keeping me waiting for hours. Instead, she arrives, practically on time, wearing a baby pink jacket with matching bag, rimless glasses, and a diffident smile. Her T-shirt bears a cartoon doll with the logo, “This girl is cute”. That logo, and the pastel pink clothes are at odds with her prima donna persona; so is her manner: she is piano, almost pianissimo. I am shocked by this subdued figure.
Gheorghiu’s reservation might be down to the reviews she received for her Magda in “La rondine”. Critics claim that her performance, in this little-known Puccini opera which yesterday finished its run at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, had been “cautious”. At 47, the soprano retains her distinctive, creamy voice — but all too often the audience must strain to hear it. I suspect there is a personal reason as well.
Covent Garden holds many memories for her: she made her international debut here in 1992, as Zerlina in “Don Giovanni”; and two years later her sensational Violetta in “La traviata”, under the baton of Sir Georg Solti, made her an international star. Above all, this was the stage where, in 1996, she met Roberto Alagna. She was a Romanian, married to an engineer, and just getting a taste for super-stardom; Alagna was a tenor with a dazzling career — and a wife and daughter back home in France. They sang together in “La boheme” and promptly fell in love. Their tempestuous relationship and later marriage were PR gold: they toured the world as opera’s Posh and Becks, a crowd-pleasing duo who promised romance and thrilling histrionics. Audiences and impresarios came to expect rows and no-shows. Then suddenly, last January, Gheorghiu announced that the couple were splitting and, in June, she accused Alagna of domestic violence.
Gheorghiu’s team (she travels everywhere with “a few assistants; I couldn’t survive without them”) warned me not to mention Alagna. But then Gheorghiu tells me, in the mixture of English and Italian she has opted to use for our interview, that “last November was the blackest time of my life. I had finished singing the first act [of ‘Tosca’] at the San Francisco Opera when I couldn’t go on. I was so ill, I almost fainted. We had to cancel the rest of the performance and I had to be rushed into hospital.”
The audience was told that Mme Gheorghiu had succumbed to intestinal flu. Today the singer says: “It was not just physical: I felt psychically broken.” Marital strife, I suggest, can prove as debilitating as flu. “I can only say that love is like a disease,” she says, her eyes welling up. “It infects every bit of me, even my brain. I am stupid in love. But I couldn’t be Angela if I weren’t romantic.” I put it to her that Alagna is contesting his ex-wife’s allegations and has called in the lawyers. Gheorghiu sits up, throws back her head and suddenly I glimpse the fiery prima donna I had found so captivating: “I never lie. Everyone who knows me will tell you, I am incapable of lying.” She looks every inch the diva when she says: “I don’t need anyone. I don’t need a home, even. Angela is at home everywhere.”
This is not the last time she refers to herself as “Angela”, as if in doing so she can draw a distinction between the woman and the performer. A distinction, she tells me, no longer possible: “It’s sad, and I blame myself: from the moment I first set foot on stage, everyone talked about my looks as well as my voice. Before me, an opera singer did not need to be beautiful. Because of me, the audience now expects everything: a whole package. “Looks are now so important in the opera, I’m not sure Luciano Pavarotti or Montserrat Caballe would have made it past the first audition, given their size. The audience now listens with their eyes. It shouldn’t be like this, but ...”
I tell her that very few women feel as confident of their appearance. She shrugs: “I know how I look. And I wouldn’t want to be any fatter or any thinner. I don’t follow any diets. Yes, I say thank you to my mother, thank you to my father, for making me like this — but we are not here because of my body.”
Emphasis on appearance naturally puts more pressure on singers of a certain age. I ask Gheorghiu if retirement fills her with dread. “No. Valerie Solti [Sir Georg Solti’s widow] invited me to hold a masterclass in Georg’s honour and I loved it. It really energised me. I felt like I was back at school. I want to do more!” she looks genuinely enthusiastic at the prospect. “In any case, all singers know their career is short-lived. It’s true of other professions, too — one of my best friends is Nadia Comaneci [the Romanian gymnast and 1976 Olympic gold medallist] and she feels the same: it is the price we pay.” She turns to me, her gaze ever so slightly condescending: “I put into my performance of one act, no, one scene, what you put into maybe five days of your life.”
I ask if she has always felt different from ordinary mortals: “I knew from when I was small that I had this voice that was special. It was a miracle. I was performing by the time I was 6. My mother [a seamstress; Gheorghiu’s father was a railway driver] made me beautiful dresses to wear on stage. From the start I had a feeling I had no choice: by singing I was following my destiny.
“I loved it. All of it. I loved being on stage, being made up, being photographed, being recognised.”
Celebrity is not a trap, then? “I have been a celebrity since I was a little girl. There are people who have something instantly attractive. Sometimes we call it charisma, sometimes, magnetism. It’s always the same effect, though: everyone wants to know everything about them.” She pauses: “I give a lot.”
Her reputation, I say carefully, would also suggest that she demands a lot: “high-maintenance” is a euphemism for what some in the world of opera say of her. Gheorghiu will have none of it: “Is it too much that I should ask for a lot back? They say Angela is cancelling this and that. Everyone else does it, but the press is only interested when I do it.”
The former child prodigy “lives out of a suitcase”, but feels at home in Britain. She has no children, but has adopted her niece, who has just graduated from the University of Kent. Together with Gheorghiu’s mother, who has flown in for a visit, they are going to a Michael Buble concert. “I like his music — nothing pretentious about it.” I ask if she attended the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park, but she shrugs: “They don’t excite me.” The Prince of Wales is another favourite. “I have sung for him and for the rest of the Royal family, in all their homes. Prince Charles is very sensitive, he is nostalgic for the past. He came to Romania and was enchanted by the place, because it was as if he’d stepped back centuries. Everything is as it always has been.”
She loves English men for their “great sense of humour. They are more gentle, the Anglo-Saxons. And they are supportive.” I ask if one might persuade her to try marriage again, but she lowers her eyes and shakes her head. Her voice is pianissimo as she says: “I don’t want to think about the future.” Suddenly, the bluster’s gone. The curtains are down, the lights off: The performance by “Angela” is over and the real Angela Gheorghiu stands alone, vulnerable, lovable and maybe even mortal.
–The Telegraph Group Ltd, London 2013
“Angela Gheorghiu Sings Verdi” is out now. “La rondine” is available on CD and DVD on EMI Classics.
