Roxana Briban

The Romanian opera singer Roxana Briban, who sang in Buch-arest, Berlin and Bangkok during a 10-year career, died on 20 November, apparently by her own hand, at the age of 39. Her husband Alexandru said she had fallen into depression after the Bucharest National Opera severed her contract in 2009.

Born in Bucharest, Briban began to sing at the age of six, and made her professinal debut in 2000 at the Bucharest National Opera, as Contessa in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. In 2003 in Vienna, she performed in Bizet's Carmen as Michaela, which launched her international career. She also performed in Berlin, Toulouse, Amsterdam, Seoul, Bangkok and Santiago, Chile.

Days before her death, Briban had posted an image of a bloodied hand from Madame Butterfly on thesocial networking site Facebook. On the morning of the day she was found dead, Briban had also posted on Facebook a film of Verdi's La Traviata in which she plays Violetta, who dies of tuberculosis.