Mădălina Manole was one of the country’s most beloved performers of all time.
The “Girl with the Hair of Fire”, as she was named after a collaboration with a hair dye company, had a short but intense life. Perhaps most importantly, the artist will be remembered for years to come for her contribution to Romanian music.
She was married twice, and some say that neither marriage would have made her truly happy.
The charts of the time named her the best pop artist
Mădălina Manole (Anca Magdalena Manole – in the bulletin) was born on July 14, 1967, in Vălenii de Munte (Prahova) in a relatively modest family, but not necessarily a stranger to the art of music.
It is said that he inherited his musical talent from his mother, who had occasionally performed folk music throughout her life.
He took guitar lessons as a teenager, and at the age of 15 he became a member of the Cenalului Tineretului Prahovean, led by Lucian Avramescu, the first person to notice his talent.
At one point, he even sang in the Cenal Flacăra, but he did not give up his studies either, attending the Chemistry High School in Ploiești, and then he finished the Bănească Air Traffic Controllers School and worked for a while in the field.
Throughout her early career, Mădălina Manole collaborated with Victor Socaciu and, at the Popular School of Art, she had the opportunity to be mentored by Mihaela Runceanu and Ionel Tudor.
She worked with Adrian Enache, Carmen Trandafir, Nicola and Silvia Dumitrescu, among many others.
In 1988, Mădălinei Manole’s life changed forever: she met the composer Șerban Ionescu, the man who, years later, would become her husband.
The two became frequent collaborators, and in 1991, they hit the big time together with the song “Fată Dragă”, a song that was to “break in two” the country’s charts, being played to the hilt by radio stations in our country.
In 1993, the album “Ei și qué?” made her the best pop artist in Romania, and Radio Contact awarded her this distinction.
In the meantime, Șerban Georgescu divorced Carmen Rădulescu and entered into a relationship with Mădălina Manole, whom he married.
“Carmen broke up with Șerban, and Mădălina was getting closer and closer to him. She was the singer who performed his songs and took her place as an artist in his team. There was a lot of talk among artists at the time that the girl with the fiery hair had influenced Georgescu to take Carmen off the radio. Something that the composer, a great personality at the time, and a powerful decision-maker, did! He went to his friends in the industry and removed his ex-girlfriend from the playlist,” sources told the press at the time.
Almost no one is said to have agreed to the marriage, since there was a 15-year age gap between the two. Șerban Georgescu’s parents would not have accepted their son marrying a woman from another social class, and Mădălinea Manole’s parents would have followed the “trend”, since they did not receive acceptance from the former.
Mădălina Manole died on her 43rd birthday
After 15 years of relationship, Mădălina Manole and Șerban Georgescu choose to divorce, without having children, which has been speculated to have been a rather serious reason.
Around the same time, her musical career goes into a bit of a decline.
After a while, however, Mădălina Manole rebuilt her love life with Petru Mircea, the man who was to marry her almost secretly, in Botoșani. Mădălina’s parents only found out after the wedding that their daughter was married again.
The two had a child together, Petru Jr.
Immediately after Mădălinea Manole’s premature death, the war between the artist’s parents and Petru Mircea began, with both sides saying astonishing things.
While Petru Mircea claimed that Mădălina had been “mistreated” by her parents as a child, the latter put forward the idea that he was not, in reality, the child’s father.
The two sides never reconciled,
Mădălina Manole passed away on July 14, 2010, the very day she turned 43. She was found dead in her home in Otopeni, and authorities decided that she had committed suicide by swallowing a deadly substance called Furadan.