Cristina Pasaroiu made her debut at Oper Frankfurt earlier this season singing the title role in Adriana Lecouvreur. She was born in Bucharest in 1986 and began taking singing lessons with Dinu Lipatti at the Conservatoire in her home town when she was 12. She went on to study at the Conservatoire de Genève und Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan before graduating from the University for Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna in 2009. This soprano has won prizes at many important singing competitions, including the „Hariclea Darclée“, the „Luciano Pavarotti“ in Modena and the 2011 „Neue Stimmen/New Voices“ competition. Concert engagements have included appearances in Peking. Recent highlights have included Frasquita in Carmen with Elīna Garanča for Deutsche Grammophon, her debut in Tokyo as Micaëla in Carmen and she took part in the „Die Stars von Morgen/Stars of Tomorrow" television show with Rolando Villazón (ZDF and Arte). She recently sang Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte at the Staatstheater in Kassel, where she will also be singing Pamina this season. Other engagements during 2013 include Violetta, and Gilda in Rigoletto under Gustav Kuhn at the Tiroler Festival in Erl and Mimì (La Bohème) at the St. Margarethe Festival.