The well-known Albanian soprano of international fame, Ermonela Jaho has today reached the pinnacle of success, but her journey to success has not been simple. Invited to Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Podcast “Flasim” /let’s talk/, she showed the “formula” of this success “the flame that each of us has when we set a goal for ourselves”. According to the famous Soprano, when you love something with all your heart, there is an energy that pushes you forward to overcome any obstacle.

“The only formula is something internal, it’s that energy, that fire that each of us has when we set a goal for ourselves. With an extraordinary work because even the most beautiful dream, even the one that seems extraordinary, let’s say, needs a very great work, because if dreams were captured so easily, they would not have this magic. I loved it so much. Maybe over time I realized that singing was the way where I channeled those feelings of mine, said and unsaid ones, where fantasy flies and there is no limit,” said Ermonela Jaho.

However, she admits that a continuous work is needed to move forward, starting with physical exercises since, as the soprano says, the body is her instrument.

“It is a job that never ends. To this day, I get up every morning, I do my physical exercises, I have found a kind of rhythm because [if] singing, you have the instrument with you and it is conditioned by the spiritual state, by the physical state, we sing without a microphone and our microphone is the body. Running, weight lifting, swimming, rope jumping. For example 500 rope jumps every morning!

That’s my coffee. Before I take the coffee, [I take] 500 rope jumps, 500 jumps because it’s the lung capacity that helps in singing and increases that stamina of being an athlete. Especially today Opera has reached another dimension. You are an athlete, you have to be an actor, and the things, the rhythm is so intense that you should have time to breathe and prepare your body, voice, etc., but especially, it is the physical side that helps a lot. In a normal production, we rehearse, 7-8 hours a day. But always having this adrenaline because it’s not like you rehearse for 3,4,5,6 hours and you say come on I’m singing a bit, I’m singing slower here. You’re on adrenaline for 6-7 hours and that’s just this physical training, and that’s when the morning starts with 500 rope jumps, then with lifting weights. You start doing these squats when you find a gym near the theater or near the apartment you got in that period where you are going to sing, a gym with barbells. So then, when I start singing, I feel the difference because I feel all the muscles of the body,” she says.

/a.p./