Saturday, February 19, 2011

Angela Gheorghiu Has €11 Million Things To Sing About

According to Libertatea (Romania's equivalent of the National Enquirer) the leading French daily newspaper Le Figaro estimates that soprano Angela Gheorghiu has quite possibly amassed a fortune of €11 Million (that's $15,069,450.00 in U.S. currency) over the course of her career. The article tries to calculate that she is paid
€200,000 when she tours promoting a new album and has a standard opera performance fee of €15,000 each night. So if you multiply a given year of appearances times her 15 years in the business, you get your rather high figure. The newspaper goes on to report that half of her fortune, however, would have gone to taxes (nearly €5 million). A few things that reporting does not take into consideration are the out-of-pocket expenses of being an opera singer like housing in every new city you sing, food for that period (mostly restaurants), designer gowns for recitals and gala performances, travel expenses from city to city as you travel the globe singing and family expenses. Of course, they also don't take into account her husband's, tenor Roberto Alagna, rather lucrative career. Although they have been together since 1996, they were rumored to be moving toward divorce proceedings but now are living amicably. Let's also not forget that another $1 million could be in her future. There is also some biographical information in the article as well. [Source]