Ramona Zaharia

The Romanian mezzo-soprano Ramona Zaharia trained at the George Enescu Conservatoire in Iasi and won numerous singing competitions. She was an ensemble member at Timisoara Opera, where she performed roles such as Zita (Puccini ‘Gianni Schicchi’), Marthe (Gounod ‘Faust’), Prince Orlofsky (Strauss ‘Die Fledermaus’), Fenena (Verdi ‘Nabucco’), the Witch (de Falla ‘El amor brujo’) and Principessa di Bouillon (Cilea ‘Adriana Lecouvreur’). Guest performances have taken Ramona Zaharia to venues including the state opera houses in Stuttgart and Hamburg. In her most celebrated role as Carmen (Bizet) she has appeared as a guest at the Opera Festival at Steinbruch St. Margarethen in Riga, in Stuttgart and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 2018/19 she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Maddalena (Verdi ‘Rigoletto’). Ramona Zaharia has been an ensemble member at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein since the 2014/15 season, and in addition to Carmen also made a highly acclaimed debut as Dalila (Saint-Saëns ‘Samson et Dalila’). Other roles she has sung here include Third Lady (Mozart ‘Die Zauberflöte’), Ulrica (Verdi ‘Un ballo in maschera’), Maddalena, Dinah (Bernstein ‘Trouble in Tahiti’), Eboli (Verdi ‘Don Carlo’), Flosshilde (Wagner ‘Das Rheingold’ and ‘Götterdämmerung’), Erda (Wagner ‘Rheingold’) and Santuzza (Mascagni ‘Cavalleria rusticana’).