Bel Cantanti Opera Visitors", at St. James Episcopal Church in Leesburg, Virginia. Bel Cantanti has had continued success with its productions of : Donizetti's "L'elisir d'Amore", Verdi's "Rigoletto", Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors", Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin", Rossini's "Il barbiere di Siviglia", Donizetti's "La fille du régiment", Humperdinck's "Hänsel und Gretel", Rachmaninoff's "Aleko", Tchaikovsky's "Iolanta", Mozart's "Le nozze di Figaro", and Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor". The company's 2007-2008 season produced fully staged versions of Mozart's "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" ("The Abduction from the Seraglio", performed in German, March 2008) and G. Puccini's birth with an abridged version of "La bohème". In December
Ileana Cotrubaș study at the "Școala Specială de Muzică" school for the musically gifted. Cotrubaș made her stage debut with the Bucharest Opera as Yniold in Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" in 1964. She subsequently expanded her repertory to include roles such as Oscar in "Un ballo in maschera", Gilda in "Rigoletto", and Blondchen in "The Abduction from the Seraglio" and began appearing in productions throughout Europe. In 1965, Cotrubaș won an important competition in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands where she won first prize in opera, lieder, and oratorio. The following year, she won a radio-television competition in Munich. Those awards, together with her great