Dramatic mezzo Ramona Zaharia made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2019 in Rigoletto as Maddalena. Born in Braila, Romania, she studied at the George Enescu University in Iasi and won numerous national and international competition prizes. Her solo career began in October 2009 at Romanian National Opera Timisoara. She made her international debut in 2012 at the Festival St. Margarethen in Austria as Carmen. Since then, she has sung in fourteen different productions of Carmen. Since the 2014/15 season, Ms. Zaharia has been a member of the ensemble at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf, where she sings Carmen, Maddalena in Rigoletto, Ulrica in Un Ballo in Maschera, Principessa di Bouillon in Adriana Lecouvreur, Federica in Luisa Miller, Princess Eboli in Don Carlo, Amneris in Aida, Flosshilde in Götterdämmerung and Das Rheingold, Erda in Das Rheingold, and Dalila in Samson et Dalila. She has sung in many opera houses including those in Hamburg, Stuttgart, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Riga, Seoul, Malmö, Bruxelles, and Luxembourg.