“Who hasn’t heard of Emilia Petrescu, the great singer with bell-like vocal purity, whose perfection of technique is beyond belief and who is capable to go in a single breath over more than ten bars of the most difficult coloratura?”, wrote Neuer Weg when the remarkable Romanian soprano was at the peak of her career. With a vast repertoire comprising 18th-century music through Romanian contemporary works and specializing in the Baroque and Classical repertoire, she frequently sang Bach, Handel and Mozart, her non-vibrato singing technique rending melodies both bright and accurate.
Emilia Petrescu (1925-2003) enjoyed an exceptional career in Europe and the US, after graduating the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy and the Royal Conservatory of Music and Drama in Bucharest, where she trained with the likes of tenor Aurel Alexandrescu and conductor Constantin Silvestri. With an unbridled passion for singing, the soprano toured, sat in the jury of international competitions, taught in Romania, the US and Turkey, and worked with such famous musicians as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Schreier, Pierre Boulez, George Georgescu and Constantin Silvestri, always exciting admiration for her extraordinary qualities – clear, delicate, flexible, style-adapted voice, musical intelligence, and exuberant artistic personality.