Marius Vlad

Tenor Marius Vlad is one of Eastern Europe's leading lyric tenors, specializing in roles from Mozart's Tamino (Die Zauberflöte) to Puccini's Rodolfo (La bohème). As his career has developed, he has added dramatic tenor roles to his repertory, and he has had a longstanding career as an educator in his native Romania. Marius Vlad, in full Marius Vlad Budoiu, was born in Cluj (Cluj-Napoca), Romania, in 1970. He studied voice at the city's Music Academy, progressing to a Doctor of Musical Arts degree there, and by 2000, he had joined the school's faculty. Vlad made his professional debut in a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, in 1991, and his operatic debut the following year as Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. Key competition showings both in Romania and abroad, including a first prize at the Traian Grosavescu Tenor Competition in Lugoj in 1995 and a third prize at the 1996 Robert Schumann Competition in Zwickau, propelled Vlad to an international career. His repertory stretches from Handel (Messiah and Judas Maccabaeus) through Mozart and major 19th century roles in several languages (he speaks German, French, Italian, and English), up to 20th century works such as Benjamin Britten's War Requiem that are less common in Eastern Europe. Later in his career, he has also taken on dramatic and spinto tenor roles such as Verdi's Otello, Wagner's Tannhäuser, and Puccini's Cavaradossi from Tosca. Vlad has appeared in nearly every European country outside Scandinavia, in such major houses as La Scala in Italy and the Berlin Staatsoper, as well as in Turkey and Japan. Vlad has sung under such conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, and Gennady Rozhdestvensky. In October of 2020, Vlad contracted COVID-19; he has called for the development of a guide to help afflicted singers recover their abilities. Vlad has appeared on several albums, including Georghe Costinescu: A Live Retrospective 1952-2002 (2007) and a 2014 recording of George Enescu's Isis with the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern. In 2021, he returned as Dick Johnson in a recording of Puccini's La fanciulla del West under conductor Lawrence Foster, made at the studios of Radio Cluj.
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