Ileana Cotrubas

Ileana Cotrubaș (Romanian: [iˈle̯ana kotruˈbaʃ] ; 9 June 1939 – 20 August 2026) was a Romanian operatic soprano. After winning the 1966 ARD International Music Competition in Munich, she made an international career at the major opera houses, a member of the Vienna State Opera from 1970. She made an international breakthrough on 7 January 1975, stepping in for Mirella Freni at La Scala in Milan as Mimì in Puccini's La bohème. Regarded by many as the best Mimi and Traviata of her time, she retired from public singing in 1990. She gave master classes from the late 1970s, and in retirement focused on coaching promising young singers. Cotrubaș was critical of the dominance of directors in opera, sometimes walking out of productions. She published a 1998 autobiography entitled Opernwahrheiten (Opera truths), and, together with her husband, in 2017, Die manipulierte Oper (The manipulated opera). Her voice was described as light and bright with a fragile timbre; Mozart roles formed a core of her repertoire. Vivien Schweitzer wrote in her New York Times obituary that Cotrubaș was able to convey the pathos of operatic heroines with her tender, pure, expressive tone. The Vienna State Opera, her artistic home, remembered that she did not seek "outward, polished perfection", but truth in both singing and acting, and that she was able, by nuanced coloring of her voice, to give individual phrases character and an "audible and palpable passion".

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