By: Katsuko Nakamura (January 10, 2012)

Were you ever curious who sung Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor for that tall, blue-skinned and tentacle-headed alien named Diva Plavalaguna was in The Fifth Element? Well, her name is Inva Mula and she is an award winning opera singer who was born in 1963 from Tirana, Albania. Her resume is quite extensive in the art of soprano singing and being the daughter of a famous opera singer and composer, Avni Mula, honestly is not that shocking at all. If you are curious by what I mean by “extensive resume,” just check out the rest of this article. It’s entirely her resume without breaks. By the way, if you aren’t familiar with opera houses, opera-related events, or opera performances, you will be as lost as I was writing this!

To not-so-briefly mention her accolades, she won the “Cantante d’ Albania” competition in 1987 and the following year she won the George Enescu Competition in Bucharest. Four years later, she won the “Butterfly” Competition in Barcelona and received an award at Plácido Domingo’s first Operalia International Opera Competition contest in Paris in 1993. She later performed at a variety of concerts with the famous tenor at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, Brussels, Munich, Oslo, and at the Europalia Mexico. In 1996, she appeared on television for her performance with Luigi Cherubini's opera Médée at Compiègne in France. Two years later, she reappeared on television for Georges Bizet’s opera La Jolie fille de Perth. Both of her performances were released on CD and DVD.

In 2001, she performed Verdi’s Falstaff at the Teatro alla Scala and Rigoletto at the Verona Arena in Italy. In continuance, she performed Bizet’s Ivan IV, the concert version, at Salle Pleyel in Paris. She recorded Puccini’s La Rondine with Angela Gheorghiu for EMI. Furthermore, she performed the role of Magda, taking Gheorghiu’s place, for the stage production of La Rondine in Toulouse and Paris in 2005. Later, she performed Adina in L’elisir d’amore at Toulouse. At the La Scala, she is a regular performer for a number of operas such as the Manon and Lucia di Lammermoor, and has travelled the world performing the role of Violetta in La Traviata. To be honest, I’m not confident this is even half of her resume.