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Renee Fleming is among the most widely admired American singers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
In 1986 she made her professional opera debut in Die Entufhrung aus dem Serail in Salzburg. In 1988 she won the Met National Council Auditions and the George London Prize (in the same week) and the Eleanor McCollum Competition in Houston.
She made her New York City Opera debut in 1989 as Mimi in La Boheme, and made her Covent Garden debut as Glauce in Cherubini's Medea later that same year. In 1991, she made her Met debut as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro. The Countess became her calling card, and she made her San Francisco debut later that year in the same role, as well as her 1993 Vienna State Opera and 1994 Glyndebourne debuts. Her 1993 La Scala debut was as Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni).
Since that time, Fleming has been in constant demand in opera houses worldwide. The combination of vocal beauty, stylistic versatility and uncommon commitment to dramatic portrayal has worked to make her an instant draw anywhere she appears.
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Angela Gheorghiu was born in Adjud, Romania and graduated from the Bucharest Music Academy. Her magnificent voice and dazzling stage presence have established her as a unique international opera star. She made her international debut in 1992 at Covent Garden (La Boheme). She made her debut in the Metropolitan Opera New york and in the Staatsoper Vienna in the same year. It was in Covent Garden that she first sang her much acclaimed La Traviata in 1994, when the BBC cleared out its schedules to broadcast the opera. The performance was also filmed and recorded by Decca.
Since then Ms Gheorghiu has been in constant demand in opera houses and concert halls around the world: New York, London, Paris, Salzburg, Berlin, Tokyo, Rome, Seoul, Venice, Athens, Monte-Carlo, Chicago, Sao Paolo, Los Angeles, Lisbon, Palermo, Beirut, Amsterdam, Kuala Lumpur, Zurich, Vienna, Madrid and Montreal.
All her CDs have received widespread critical acclaim and have been awarded many prizes such as Gramophone Awards, Diapason d'Or Awards, Choc du Monde de la Musique (France), Cecilia Prize (Belgium), Deutsche Schallplattenkritik-Preis (Germany), the Italian Musica e dischi Foreign Lyric Production Award, the USA Critics' Award etc. At the Classical Brit Award in 2001 she won the title of Female Artist of the Year.
In December 2000 Ms Gheorghiu started filming Tosca. The film was released in cinemas around the world: " She is one of the most sensuous Toscas imaginable... Angela Gheorghiu's passion and beauty are ideal for Tosca, as if the best qualities of Callas' and Tebaldi's portrayals had come together." (Opera News, USA)
A coloratura soprano who in the late 1990s became one of the most noticed new names on the international operatic circuit, Sumi Jo was a discovery of the flamboyant German conductor Herbert von Karajan. A striking beauty, she owed her initial celebrity in part to video: the conductor arranged for her a prominent role in his "Karajan in Salzburg" video production.
Sumi Jo was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1962. After studying both voice and piano from a young age, she dropped out of Seoul National University in 1983 to travel to Italy for study at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Among her teachers were Carlo Bergonzi and Grannila Bonelli.
She graduated in 1985, with a concentration in keyboard as well as voice and over the next few years took top voice competition prizes in several countries, attracting the attention of Karajan.
Her operatic debut came as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto in 1986 and two years later she performed in Un Ballo in Maschera under Karajan's baton. In the 1990s and early 2000s she was ubiquitous, singing in major capitals on nearly every continent.
