"...Herlea gefiel durch sein natürliches, von Gemessenheit und verhaltener Leidenschaft gekennzeichnetes Spiel, und seine klangvolle, nuancenreiche Stimme befähigte ihn, alle Ausdrucksbereiche dieser Partie mit echtem Empfinden zu gestalten."
LEIPZIGER VOLKSZEITUNG
"Andrea Chenier " en la Zarzuela " Nicolae Herlea lució la segura belleza de su timbre cálido y una austeridad técnica y escénica digna de todo elogio..."
ARRIBA, Madrid
"...A splendid voice, impeccable technique, an elegant performance and his own style are qualities that make up his artistic personality ... One does not overestimate him when saying that his performance is a matchless one. The artist brought on stage the very atmosphere of the great performances..."
DÉL MAGYARORSZAG, Budapest
"Nicolae Herlea compuso bien su personaje de Gérard y estuvo siempre firme en su papel, dándole humanidad..."
EL ALCAZAR, Madrid
"Al reparto procede distinguir a Nicolae Herlea, baritono con una voz de mucha calidad, grata en el término de los graves, y que formó el triduo central de la pieza con mucha efectividad llenando ese amplio campo del Yago de este Otelo."
EL ECO DE CANARIAS, Spain
"V. Festival de Opera "Otello" de Verdi, con Mario del Monaco - No olvidamos a Nicolae Herlea, hasta lograr auténticos efectos granfortianos, en particular en toda esa sugerente. Era la notte."
DIARIO DE LAS PALMAS, Spain
" »Every great artist yealds us, contaminates us, said Goethe. Some of his virtuosity that lies also inside ourselves is set in motion and, because we have an image of the greatness and some propensities in this sense, we fancy its core being kept back within us«. The great poet is perfectly right; the marvellous spell which wraps us up beside a strong artistic creation, that captivates us and overpowers our whole inward nature, finds an explanation in the fact that the harmony, the matchless force of transfigurement, the perfection discover with us an intercourse of feeling, sentiments and thought, enlivening into our very heart new human virtualities of the noblest kind, raised to the sublime combustion.
Hearing Nicolae Herlea with so many opportunities - on our stage, on records, at radio and T.V. -, following the press echo of his long worldwide tours with the vast train of praises everywhere accompanying him, we have completed year by year the representation of his artistic personality with boundless resources of thrilling and mastering of consciences and we have been thinking at Goethe's sayings, in which we recognize the aesthetic basis of the Rornanian interpreter's universality and genuineness of his art. Beyond his exceptional vocal gifts and his accomplished technique, surveyed from the whole construction to the minute detail by the skill of an artisan, Nicolae Herlea's creation fascinates and subdues by an incontestable quality, able to cherish the feeling that we are before not only of a great virtuoso, but of a musician endowed by a complexity of thinking and style little usual. When critics of reputation often give up the instruments of analysis and resort to exclamations, mentioning the fact that Herlea electrizes, enchants and dominates the audience, when the idea of a »Herlea phenomenon« is often expressed by the biggest and most notorious international publications, - there is no doubt that what we understand and love in his wonderful creation is a good with a value of universal circulation, which does not know and cannot have any limits.
Currently, the music fan, as well as the exacting specialist, notice in an interpretation the one or the other among the attributes that bestow to a singer the particular aura of his art; there are but very rare cases when in a single personality meet, like a bunch of generous marks touching the exemplariness, all the qualities. The presence of that happy synthesis in the interpretative art history emphasizes as a standard, as a moment of reference for the future generations. Such a personality and such a presence is Nicoloe Herleo on the so rich landscape of our interpretative art values and - beyond the frontiers of our country - in the vast realm of the contemporary lyrical art, where his appearance is shining like a first size star.
»Herlea is an artist of a monumental value«, »a true artistic miracle«, »an ideal barytone«, »a grandiose appearance«, »a golden voice«, »an artist with inexhaustible vocal and scenic resources«, »»one of the greatest personalities of nowadays lyrical art« - the superlatives do not cease for years trying to sketch in chronicles and headlines the portrait of the distinguished artist. It could be possible to transcribe whole pages of the enthusiastic appreciations which carried along his imposing artistic career, from the Scala of Milan to the Bolshoi in Moscow, from the Staatsoper of Vienna to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, witnessing, by every line and every eulogy, the joy and the admiration of those who have heard his voice and knew his creation. Thus presented him a Berlin newspaper: »What Caruso is for the Italians and Shaliapin for the Russians is Herlea for the Romanians«, and the great Jean-Louis Borroult stated, after a performance in which he has heard him: »In the gold mine of the chief interpreters, Herlea shimmered with all the 24 carats of his voice«.
The constellations within Herlea glimmered include stars such as Joan Sutherland, Giulietta Simionato, Franco Corelli, Cesare Siepi, Nikolai Ghiaurov, Mario del Monaco, Carlo Bergonzi, Nicolai Gedda, and the conductors' baton of his performances belonged to artists like Karajan, Lorin Maazel, Alberto Erede, Georges Pretre, Kurt Adler, Gabrielle Santini ... In the chronicle of the contemporary interpretative art, Nicolae Herlea's creations reach the climax and it is the pride of this people to add to the illustrious row of the Romanian opera singers, who conquered the world stages, the name of our barytone.
Mastering a lyrical repertoire that identifies with the list of masterpieces of the genre, Nicolae Herlea is, without doubt, one of the most genuine and original interpreters of Giuseppe Verdi's operas: he fuses into these roles to the last fibre of his being, providing them the highest scenic expression and style purity.
We do not know what to admire first: the warm timber, the phrasing plasticity, the enlivened characters and modelled types, the vigour or the fineness of chant that Nicolae Herlea guides with an innate talent and a splendid elegance to the wanted effects. In whatever he is doing, Nicolae Herlea generously offers his whole heart, remaining faithful to his artistic credo, few interpreters being animated as he is by the consciousness of the responsibility toward art, toward the public.
The choice granted by this record to the opera music fans, far from exhausting and demonstrating all the artist's qualities, may be regarded, for the virtues it emphasizes, for the valuable recording, an anthological page of the Romanian lyric discography."
Mircea Horia Simionescu
"At the top of his artistic career, the phenomenon Herlea is the quintessence of an outstanding art, a prominent exponent of the Belcanto school. As first soloist of the Bucharest Opera, Nicolae Herlea enjoys a wide recognition as a great artist and musician, and he counts among the world's most valuable artistic personalities.
Nicolae Herlea is a graduate of the Bucharest Conservatoire and of the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome, making his debut in Pagliacci at the Opera in Bucharest, which scored him a brilliant success from the outset.
Mastering a well-trained, colourful, natural voice, the artist displays ample and powerful vibratos, which sound perfect not only in the middle-, but also in the higher-register where they sparkle with particular brilliance. His firm vocal technique and flawless diction are always accompanied by most suitable touches of his personality on the stage.
The main characteristic of all opera heroes whom Nicolae Herlea embodied, emerges from his own artistic creed, i. e. »... I believe in the inner-born art, the simple and essential art, which is free of sham, of bombast, and of useless gestures.«
His repertoire includes a wide range of operas, vocal-symphonic works and lieder, belonging to foreign and Romanian composers - all of them performed in their original language.
Practically the artist has been so far a guest-soloist on almost all major stages of Europe and United States
in opera performances, concerts and recitals. He has also been quite often invited either as soloist or jury member to prominent international festivals and contests."
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