Good vibes after the 2024 Masterclass

Her Excellency, Simona Miculescu
Romania’s Ambassador to UNESCO

“I confess to sense of familiarity but also to a deep feeling that it is as if I am in a mini UNESCO here. Why? Because the Salbek Castle Estate is every day being transformed into a mini UNESCO, a magical space dedicated to culture, heritage, art, and education. Above all else this is because the Salbek Masterclass is being held here right now and it is a unique opportunity for young and very talented opera singers to interact and be mentored by world famous names in opera, from Ruxandra Donose to Leontina Văduva and Ramon Vargas. A wonderful opportunity.

It’s an exercise in beauty, talent, creativity, in a unique natural setting. I’m also talking about the sculpture park, which I’ve seen growing every year. So, an absolutely wonderful feeling. It’s as if I’m at UNESCO, I feel the cultural and artistic vibration of UNESCO, and what I like most of all is that we’re here in the Romanian countryside, where Lucian Blaga was inspired by the beauty of the Romanian village, saying: ‘Eternity was born in the village.’

I have the feeling that the eternity of art is here promoted thanks to the outstanding efforts of Ana Maria Mihăescu and her family and I’m very grateful for this and I think that when we think of multilateral diplomacy, of our world today, we should remember that our world is simply a canvas for the Creator’s imagination.”

Ruxandra Donose
Masterclass maestro, mezzo-soprano

“I was absolutely delighted to be here at Salbek once again. Not only is the natural setting so wonderful, so beautiful, a setting we are trying to bring back to life through culture, but also, we were at a summer camp for musical performance and creativity, an intensive programme with 23 singers chosen with painstaking care from among more than 70. Last year the level was superb too, this year seemingly even more so. What can I say? By raising the age limit for applicants, we managed also to bring young professionals among us, who gladdened me by their presence, because it means that even when you start making a living at it you don’t stop studying.

You might think that in just a few days you can’t go very deeply into canto technique, so we set out by focusing on true mastery, these are mastery classes. It’s taken for granted that the basic knowledge is there already, but more often than not through music, performance, a certain feeling we wish to convey, we return to the basics and in this way, I think we cover almost everything that can be covered, everything that the time allows us to cover. At the same time, we also talk to the young singers about how to pursue their careers, what to look out for, how to move around the stage, what to do. There are a million pieces of advice great and small that we’re able to give, Leontina Văduva, Ramón Vargas and I, who have all appeared on the world’s great stages and continue to appear, and we have a store of knowledge which we’re only to happy to pass on. So, almost everything is studied.

I’m very happy to meet the public from Arad once more. Last year the sheer scale of the concert was a true surprise for us all. Thousands and thousands of people came to the plaza to listen to the concert. This year, the same. This year we’re trying to give a chance to sing to more of the young people from the competition, in one way or another, either as soloists or as part of an ensemble, a duet, a trio, or as soloists in the final ensemble, which is highly spectacular.

It’s a very interesting question to what extent the wider public has access to opera music, and of course, in order to have access you need to go to an opera house, you have to get the idea of going to an opera house, but here, in the plaza in front of City Hall, you’re given the idea, it’s given to you, without your having to think of it. So, you hear music, you cannot help but like it, because in the open air, in summer, in the warm weather, the music that’s played will always be accessible, and in this way, maybe people will gain an appetite for more complex, more demanding opera music.”

Mihai Damian
Masterclass student, baritone

“I’m at the International Salbek Opera Class for the second time. Whereas the first time I came with a certain amount of trepidation and the thoughts any young person has, this time I arrived with great enthusiasm, leaving aside all my fears and I was delighted to meet once again maestros Ramon Vargas, Ruxandra Donose, and Leontina Văduva. It’s a pleasure to work with them and they have enormous knowledge and experience behind them, which it would be a shame for us young people not to take advantage of.

Even though they’re major figures of the opera world and command authority simply for the careers they’ve had, they inspired in us a sense of familiarity and warmth from the outset, which helped us all to relax and give our all without being afraid of potential failure, and this is a quality we weren’t expecting.

A singer is very much like an athlete, and during rest periods what is important and at the same time vital is a gradual recovery made with a lot of understanding and intelligence. Which is why a masterclass like this was a good opportunity to get back in the swing of it, to awaken your muscles to life, to get back in shape, and to open up fresh horizons for yourself, a fresh season, a fresh repertoire . . . a fresh look at the rôles in your repertoire or the ones you want to study. So, an outstanding opportunity to do all these things.”

Ana Maria Mihăescu
President of the Salbek Castle Association

“We’re delighted to have brought to a close the second edition of the Salbek Masterclass. There was impressive international attendance: from 70 applicants on four continents, we chose 23 who I’m sure will become outstanding voices not only on the Romanian stage but worldwide. The same as we tried to do last year, by means of this highly sophisticated means of teaching, we are helping the careers of young artists on their way to becoming maestros. And we’re delighted, for the second year, to have with us Ruxandra Donose, Ramon Vargas, and Leontina Văduva, and with them, I hope, at Salbek, we will make a significant contribution to perfecting this type of education for young musicians.

The second edition of the International Salbek Masterclass showed us that our aim of engaging the best voices to guide young voices was a very good one, and thanks to this we also had a large number of applicants. This is what we also expect from the third edition, but from the third edition onwards we would also gradually like to introduce opera days, the kind of opera picnics known throughout the world as country opera parks, which are very well known in Britain, France, Finland, Switzerland, but we hope to make them well known in Romania too, via Salbek.”

Leontina Văduva
Masterclass maestro, soprano

“It’s a great joy for us to meet again at the second edition of the Salbek Opera Masterclass Festival and above all for me to be reunited with my colleagues Ruxandra Donose and Ramón Vargas, as we all work together so wonderfully, each of us making our own contribution to shaping the young talents in attendance.

There were numerous applicants for this masterclass, more than seventy people, and in the end, we were able to select 24. There were a number from abroad and also many exceptionally talented Romanians. So, absolutely all of them were of an incredible level, because the Romanian voices are very beautiful, they’re very talented young people, since they’re no longer children, they’re talented young people, and from abroad, likewise, we had the opportunity to listen to two exceptional tenors, a soprano from France, from Mexico, from Spain, they came here to us and I’m very, very happy that the previous edition had such a big impact and that there were so many of them this year.

How to define this masterclass and why there are three of us singers with international careers?
Because we have a tenor, a mezzosoprano, and a soprano. It’s very beneficial for the young people, because each is able to identify with their own particular area. We tell them about our experiences and then, with those already on the stage, we correct minor imperfections that we identify or difficulties that they might have in certain vocalisations or certain rôles. I think this is highly important and, in this way, we help them to do well what they have to do, to learn, to be more professional, to experiment, giving them our suggestions, because each of us brings our own stage experience, and they obviously benefit from this in their stage presence, how to move around on stage, how to help each other, so, all these elements are extremely useful.”

Rodica Ștefan
Masterclass student, soprano

“I wanted to take part in the Salbek International Opera Masterclass from the very first edition thanks to the experience I discovered in the photographs and films on social media, so this year the event took place, I’m very glad to have taken part in this masterclass and to have worked with these international maestros from whom I was very glad to receive precious information that I can store away and put into my everyday practice.

First of all it’s a question of the exchange of energy between student and canto teacher, because from my point of view I came here with an open heart to be able to absorb as much information as possible, and so this is also my advice to future students: come with an open heart and be prepared to take away all the information, listen carefully, because the maestros say amazingly interesting things that will be of real use in the future as you develop as artists. Let me now say what exactly this type of masterclass teaches you. One really important thing I should underline is the emphasis on performance of the repertoire conveyed to the student, which as I see it is a highly important subject, the fact that we singers really ought to learn what the repertoire means and how to relate to it from the standpoint of performance, of the character, because, granted, we come and we sing and work on a given aria, but we actually forget that we are the character whom we want to discover and work with, and more often than not we forget to place an emphasis on the performance side, thinking that technique alone is the most important thing. But I think that both have to combine, and the result will then be exceptional.

The fact that I’m already a stage artist doesn’t mean I’ve completed the job or learned everything there is to be learned. I’m engaged in a continual learning process because the voice is a continually changing natural instrument, in which case I constantly need to be actively training, and more often than not we need a teacher or someone on the other side to be able to correct us, to give us advice, tips on how to solve certain problems, because I’m at the beginning of my career and so the problems seem extraordinarily numerous and I try very hard to solve them, I try to cope, I try to identify them, to tackle them, and on stage to be the best version of myself, because that’s what it’s about. To be the best we can.”