Soprano Angela Gheorghiu will team up with the MET Orchestra Musicians for a virtual concert scheduled to take place on February 21, Stiri.tvr.ro reported.

Gheorghiu will perform from the Romanian Athenaeum concert hall in Bucharest, while the MET Orchestra musicians will collaborate from New York.

The proceeds from this concert will go to the MET Orchestra Musicians Fund, which supports over 150 musicians in need - orchestra members, associates, librarians, and affiliated music staff.

Gheorghiu will perform Dvořák’s Song to the Moon (Rusalka) in a special arrangement for soprano and bass quintet, and Our Father by Anton Pann, a tribute to the nine musicians from the MET Orchestra who have retired during the pandemic.

“My fellow colleagues and I speak about how happy we are for being part of the ‘Metropolitan Opera family’ - for me, since my Met debut in 1993, these are not just empty words, and I want to show my love, my respect and my real support for all of them through facts, through offering my voice for this cause, in a special appearance during their next virtual concert and joined by MET musicians,” Gheorghiu said. 

“A great opera performance does not mean only great singers, but also a great orchestra, a great chorus and many more great people working for the whole production, every day. Without our colleagues, musicians from the orchestra and chorus, we cannot be real Opera Stars, only by ourselves. Without all of these artists and company members, opera would not exist, it would be impossible... And this is why I invite everybody to help the Met family... my family... our family!”  

Tickets for this concert cost USD 15 and are available for purchase at spotlight.metorchestramusicians.org.  

In a statement at the end of last year, the Met Orchestra said the musicians had been unpaid for 10 months and counting. “The Metropolitan Opera is an outlier in our industry; every other major orchestra has been compensated since the very beginning of the pandemic,” the statement read.

(Photo: Angela Gheorghiu Facebook Page)

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