At the beginning of her career, Violeta Urmana gained international recognition as a highly successful Kundry in Parsifal and as Eboli. She also performed Azucena, Amneris, Dido, Santuzza, Fides, Leonor de Guzmán, Judith, Laura, Adriano Colonna and Fricka, among others, at the world’s leading opera houses. Between 2001 and 2002, she made the transition to dramatic soprano and performed roles such as Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, Elisabetta in Don Carlo, Leonora in La forza del destino, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Odabella in Attila, as well as the title roles in Aida, La Gioconda, Medea, Tosca, Norma, Iphigénie en Tauride and Ariadne auf Naxos, in addition to Brünnhilde in Siegfried, Sieglinde in Die Walküre and Isolde.
Currently, Violeta Urmana continues to perform the Italian and German dramatic mezzo-soprano repertoire, which she keeps steadily expanding. She is a regular guest at the world’s major opera houses — the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Teatro Real in Madrid, the Opéra National de Paris, Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Vienna State Opera, Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London — as well as at the festivals of Bayreuth, Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, Edinburgh and the BBC Proms.
She made her debut at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in the 1994/95 season with Madama Butterfly and has since returned for the Concert of the Gran Teatre del Liceu Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (1999/2000), a recital (2003/04, 2010/11), Parsifal (2004/05) and La forza del destino (2012/13).