Soprano and pianist Lucia Cosma was born on September 13, 1875 in Beiuș, Bihor County, to Partenie, lawyer and deputy, and Maria, president of the first feminist association in Transylvania and founder of important educational institutions in Sibiu.
First training with piano teacher Hedvig Bocnicke Herman, she then took courses in singing, music theory, and harmony with celebrated composer Gheorghe Dima. She made her artistic debut (as pianist and soprano) in 1894, the year she married lawyer Aurel Cosma and settled in Timișoara, and in 1895 she made her Bucharest debut, again as pianist and soprano with the Dima Choir. In 1905 she was a guest at the opening of the Astra Palace and Museum in Sibiu, and 1906 found her in Bucharest, appearing in operetta performances, at the National Theatre, with various other theatre companies such as Zaharia Bârsan’s, and in solo recitals.
After studies in Paris with Mathilde Marchesi, Lucia Cosma toured Ardeal and, on February 8, 1910, she sang in the first-ever all-lied recital by a Romanian artist. Among her collaborators as a recitalist were pianist Theodor Fuchs and the great George Enescu.
Charged with espionage after the onset of WW1, the musician self-exiled in Moldova, Russia, Norway, Great Britain, France and Italy. She would resume her artistic career in Romania after the war, performing Gilda to famous baritone Jean Athanasiu’s Rigoletto in Verdi’s opera of the same name. From 1924 to 1938, when she was forced to retire following a law on upper age limit, she taught at the Bucharest Conservatory, and from 1942 and 1948 she was both a teacher and the director of the Popular School of Arts Sibiu.
Awarded the Work Order, 1st Class, Lucia Cosma worked with important musicians, was a member of literary and artistic salons alongside such great figures in Romanian culture as care Nicolae Iorga, Octavian Goga and Barbu Delavrancea, took part in feminist organisations, did charity work, and gave benefit concerts.
Lucia Cosma died on June 11, 1972, in Sibiu.
Petre Fugaciu