Nelly Miricioiu: Her art and life is perfect film material

MANILA, Philippines - Twenty-six years after her last Manila performance at the Manila Metropolitan Theater and earlier at the CCP, Romanian diva Nelly Miricioiu remains a global diva of the first order.

Now in her mid-50s, La Miricioiu is still active and continues to baffle and charm critics.

Last year, she sang Norma and Adriana Lecouvreur in Rome, London and Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater. She was in Semiramide in Lisbon, Tosca in Frankfurt. A decade earlier, she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera as Mimi in Boheme and returned a decade later as Elena in Il Vespri Siciliani.

In between engagements, she had televised master classes in Guildhall School of Music in London and was also in Athens as a member of the jury of the Maria Callas Grand Prix of which she was a previous grand prize winner with no second or third prize winners.

To those who watched her Manila debut in 1980 when he was in her late 20s at the CCP and at the Manila Metropolitan Theater in 1984, the diva has lead a colorful life fit for a blockbuster film.

Her Manila opening nights caused pandemonium. Because of her sheer vocal power, she sang till three in the morning in Malacañang and Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady called her better than Maria Callas. Then she figured in a Manila defection that had her photos plastered on the front pages of Manila papers in the late ’80s.

After four years in England, she returned to Manila in 1984 to give a concert where she not only waived her fees but donated cash to the financially hard up Manila Symphony Orchestra.

I remember that her first aria (“A non credea” from La Sonnambula) was interrupted by a loud applause just before the cabaletta. At aria’s end, the audience was wild with ecstasy. When she sang the last two Filipino songs, Sa Kabukiran and Ay Ay Kalisud, pandemonium broke loose and I heard deafening applause and the stomping of feet not just from the audience but from the orchestra members as well. Seated at the back row, I was dazed. One such enamoured listener was Boy Abunda, then working with Miss Conchita Sunico at the Metropolitan Theater.

The reviews of her Manila Met debut were unanimous.

Rosalinda Orosa, then writing for the Daily Express, called Miricioiu a “gift of the gods” in her front-page review. Mrs. Leonor Orosa Goquingco wrote that she was in fact better than Maria Callas, and Antonio Hila, then writing for the Times Journal, referred to her as “a stunning phenomenon.”

Of that “defection” announced by Nelly in Manila in 1980, certain things may now be clarified.

Mrs. Marcos, in deference to the country’s diplomatic relations with Romania in 1980, rejected Nelly’s request for asylum.

Great Britain — through the help of Lord Harewood who is related to the British monarch (and a confidante of the late Maria Callas) — accepted Nelly after her triumphant debut in a Covent Garden production of Pagliacci opposite Jon Vickers.

After her worldwide success and the subsequent fall of the Romanian dictator, the Romanian government finally allowed Nelly to see her family. She was soon separated from her Romanian husband and married a British impresario with whom she now has a son.

And yet the Nelly I would cherish is not just the diva but the warm person. In one such intimate and impromptu musicale the late Nory Poblador would host from time to time, she would sing Mutya ng Pasig for the late Conching Rosal and Irma Potenciano and it was easy to see she had found Manila her second home.

Years later, I got another card from Nelly. It said: “Please let me have a copy of the video tape of the concert I gave for Mrs. Marcos in (Malacañang) Palace. It will make me very happy.” In 1980, Nelly sang for Mrs. Marcos until three in the morning.

With that request, the diva clearly would like to relive that night she conquered Manila’s audiences and that marathon singing night Mrs. Marcos told her, she was, in fact, better than Maria Callas.

On top of this worldwide success, the Nelly I remember was the diva who in 1984 gave a free concert at the Manila Metropolitan Theater as her gift to the Filipinos. I remember she dined with Filipino friends (among them Atty. Poblador) and even obliged to sing Granada in a Makati restaurant in a spirit of fun. After her singing which literally froze both waiters and customers, a gentle old lady approached her and said, “You have a fantastic voice. I think you should take up voice culture.”

To which Nelly said, “Thank you, I think I will.”

And to think that two weeks earlier before she sang in Manila, she just appeared in three soprano roles in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman at the Paris Opera.