The Romanian baritone and Tony award winner, for his portrayal as Marcello in Baz Luhrmann’s production of Puccini’s La Bohème on Broadway. He joined Opera San José as a Resident Artist in the 2019-2020 season portraying Eisenstein in Die Fleidermaus, The Father in Hansel and Gretel, and Count Di Luna in Il Trovatore. He returned as a Resident for the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons as The Count in The Marriage of Figaro, Escamilio in Carmen, and Ford in Falstaff. He will return as Resident Artist Emeritus as the title role in our 2024 production of Verdi’s Rigoletto.
Between 2014 and 2019 he sang such roles as Leporello, Conte Almaviva, Stan Kowalski, Escamillo and both Stubb and Starbuck for Opera San José.
In Europe he performed a wide ranging repertoire from modern to standard opera.
Highlights of his international Opera credits are leading roles at:
Heidelberg Opera, Stuttgart Opera, Salzburg music festival, Munich State Opera, Berlin opera, Pesaro Teatro Rossini, Piccola Scala di Milano, Macerata teatro di opera, Romanian National theater, Tokyo Opera House, Matsumoto Opera, Montreal Opera and Opera Theater of Tel Aviv.
After his successful apprenticeship At San Francisco opera’s summer program Merola, he was awarded the position of Adler fellow at San Francisco Opera. During this time he sang, among others, The roles of: Tomski in Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame, Riccardo in Italiana in Algeri, the title role in Don Giovanni, the pilot in The Little Prince, Belcore in Elixir of Love, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor and Tarquinius in Rape of Lucretia.
His long lasting collaboration with Michael Tilson Thomas saw him sing the lead role in “the Thomashefskies” which was toured across the USA in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York. Eventually recorded for PBS TV station and released on DVD by EMI Classics and Netflix.
In 2012 he sang The title role in Shostakovich’s Orango directed by Peter Sellers and conducted by Esa Pekka Salonen Deutsche Grammophon released the world premiere recording onto CD in 2013 For the opera Movie “Cities of salt” by the Syrian composer Zaid Shabri he sang the role of the older brother, Produced by Columbia University New York .
His passion for modern opera is well documented in his numerous performances with Opera Parallèle And The Crucible in Oakland. For which he performed the roles of Philipe Glass’ Orpheus, Nicomedes in Young Ceasar, Sam in , the Minsk Man in Flight, and the title role In The Machine by Clark Suprenovicz For Livermore Opera he has directed and performed 10 productions In the past decade. Among them, Rigoletto, Carmen, Don Giovanni, La Boheme, un ballo in maschera and many others. His directing activities have also seen him create opera productions for San Francisco opera, Mendocino music festival and Freiburg opera.
He graduated both the Academy of music in Transylvania, Romania and the Mozarteum in Salzburg Austria.
