Carmen Giannattasio, soprano
Carmen Giannattasio studied singing at the Avellino Conservatory and was a member of the opera studio at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. In 2002, she won the Operalia singing competition in Paris and sang Desdemona (Otello) at the Los Angeles Opera. This was followed by appearances at the Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Bavarian State Opera, the Bolshoi Theatre, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris and the opera houses of San Francisco, Vienna, Madrid, Berlin, Brussels, Turin, Venice, Naples, Amsterdam, Hamburg and the Aix-en-Provence Festival, among others. She has worked with renowned conductors such as paolo Arrivabeni, Maurizio Benini, James Conlon, Myung-Whun Chung , Diego Matheuz, Zubin Mehta, Sir Antonio Pappano, Daniele Rustioni, Pinchas Steinberg and Omer Meir Wellber. Carmen Giannattasio’s repertoire includes composers like Donizetti,Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Puccini, Mascagni. Since being chosen to front important new bel canto recordings by Opera Rara, who champion rarely performed operas of the 19th century, she has distinguished herself in Rossini’s La donna del lago, Donizetti’s Parisina and in particular Rossini’s Ermione – a performance which has earned her plaudits from leading critics worldwide, with the recording winning the 2011 Gramophone Opera Award. Her recordings with the English label also include Bellini’s Il Pirata (2010) and Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro (2011). In the 2020/21 season Carmen Giannattasio guested at the Teatro Massimo Palermo in Il Crepuscolo dei Sogni/Traumdämmerung (based on an idea by Johannes Erath), as Tosca at Sydney Opera, and as Alice Ford in a new production of Falstaff in Aix-en-Provence. Highlights of the 2021/22 season were the season opening at the Vienna State Opera with Tosca, Falstaff at the Lyon Opera and La Wally with the Munich Radio Orchestra. In the role of Tosca she also celebrated a great success at the Festival in Macerata. Future engagements will take the artist back to the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she has been invited to sing Giorgetta (Il Tabarro) the title role in La Gioconda and in Tosca. Other plans include Eugene Onegin at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo and series of concerts in Madeira and at the Carnegie Hall in New York. Carmen Giannattasio is an ambassador for the jewelers Bulgari and is outfitted by the designer Antonio Riva. She is also an ambassador for Italian perfume brand Carthusia and Swiss luxury skincare brand La Prairie. In February 2017, Carmen Giannattasio was honored with the title of Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella della Repubblica Italiana.

Joseph Calleja, tenor

Bryn Terfel, baritone
Welsh baritone Sir Bryn Terfel has established an extraordinary career, performing regularly on the world’s prestigious concert and opera stages. After winning the Song Prize at the 1989 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, Sir Bryn made his professional operatic debut in 1990 as Guglielmo in Così fan tutte with Welsh National Opera. He made his international operatic debut in 1991 as Speaker in Die Zauberflöte at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels and made his American debut in the same year as Figaro with Santa Fe Opera. Other roles performed during his career include Méphistophélès in Faust, both the Title Role and Leporello in Don Giovanni, Jochanaan in Salome, the Title Role in Gianni Schicchi, Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress, Wolfram in Tannhäuser, Balstrode in Peter Grimes and Four Villains in Les contes d’Hoffmann. Sir Bryn marked his 50th birthday and twenty-five years in the profession with a special one-off Gala Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, presented by Hollywood star Michael Sheen. The celebrations continued at Cardiff’s Wales Millennium Centre, where he sang Scarpia in a special concert performance of Tosca with Welsh National Opera. Recent performances include Balstrode for Wiener Staatsoper and Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Holländer in Der fliegende Holländer for Grange Park Opera, Wiener Staatsoper and his house debut at ABAO Bilbao Opera, Falstaff for Zürich Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Münich and Grange Park Opera, Scarpia for Opera National de Paris and Opera Națională București, Don Pizarro in Fidelio at the Schloßberg, Graz, Don Pasquale at the Royal Opera House, Sweeney Todd for Zürich Opera and Boris Godunov for Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Royal Opera House. Other operatic highlights to date include his debut in the role of Hans Sachs in the critically acclaimed production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for Welsh National Opera, Wotan in The Ring Cycle at the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera, New York, his debut in the role of Reb Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof for Grange Park Opera, Sweeney Todd for English National Opera and hosting a four day festival, Brynfest, at the Southbank Centre, London as part of the Southbank Centre’s Festival of the World. Equally at home on the concert platform, his highlights range from the opening ceremony of the Wales Millennium Centre, BBC Last Night of the Proms and the Royal Variety Show to a Gala Concert with Andrea Bocelli in Central Park, New York and curating a special Christmas concert and live international stream for the Metropolitan Opera’s ‘Met Stars Live in Concert’ series from Brecon Cathedral, Wales. Recent performances include a series of concerts with Orchester National de Bretagne in Rennes and Paris, celebrating 250 years since Beethoven’s birth with orchestral arrangements of Beethoven’s Celtic Songs. He has given recitals all over the world and for nine years held his own festival in Faenol, North Wales. Sir Bryn is a Grammy, Classical Brit and Gramophone Award winner with a discography encompassing operas of Mozart, Wagner and Strauss, and more than fifteen solo discs including Lieder, American musical theatre, Welsh songs and sacred repertory. Bryn was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to Opera in 2003, was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Music in 2006 and received a knighthood for his service to music in 2017. Earlier this year, he was honoured with the title of Austrian Kammersänger for his services to the Wiener Staatsoper. He was the last recipient of the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation and in 2015, he was given The Freedom of the City of London.

Gianluca Marcianò
Praised by the SundayTimes for “his unfailingly theatrical and idiomatic conducting”, Gianluca Marcianò is the Principal Conductor of Orchestra della Magna Grecia in Taranto and Matera (Italy), Principal Guest Conductor of the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, Artistic Director of Al Bustan Festival, and Artistic Director of Chelsea Opera Group. Originally from Lerici, Marcianò made his debut in 2006 at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. Since that moment on, he has built very strong ties with the Opera Houses of Oviedo, Minsk, and Ljubjana, as well as in the UK (English National Opera, Grange Park Opera, Scottish Opera, Opera North, and Longborough Opera Festival). Nel corso della sua carriera, Marcianò ha lavorato con grande successo con la maggior parte dei più grandi musicisti dei nostri tempo, tra cui Sir Bryn Terfel, Thomas Hampson, Elina Garanča, Sumi Jo, Joseph Calleja, Simon Keenlyside, Sondra Radvanovsky, Olga Peretyatko, Danielle De Niese, Gautier Capuçon, Renaud Capuçon, Arabella Steinbacher, Anna Tifu, Francesca Dego, Vanessa Benelli Mosell, Steven Isserlis, Boris Andrianov, Maria João Pires, Gloria Campaner, David Geringas, Khatia Buniatshvili, Sergei Krylov, Nina Kotova, Giovanni Sollima, Sergei Nakariakov, Denis Kozhukin, Alexander Buzlov, Boris Andrianov, Alison Balsom, Valentina Lisitsa, Andreas Ottensamer. In addition, he has conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Polish Baltic Philharmonic, the Wroclaw Philharmonic, the Georgian Philharmonic, the Tokyo New City Orchestra, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the Oviedo Philharmonia, the Moscow City Russian Philharmonic, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Macau Orchestra, the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra, the Toscanini Philharmonic, the Orchestra of Tuscany and others. Since 2010, he has conducted La Traviata, Tosca, Un Ballo in Maschera, Rigoletto, Die Zauberflöte, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, Alzira, Nabucco, Don Carlo, Evgenij Onegin, Samson et Dalila, and Madama Butterfly at Grange Park Opera. From 2011 to 2014, Marcianò served as Music Director of the Tbilisi State Opera, conducting La Forza del Destino, Cavalleria Rusticana, Nabucco, Attila, Il Trovatore, Mitridate, King of Pontus, and Aida, and later, from 2017 to 2019, he was Principal Conductor of the Serbian National Theater in Novi Sad and Principal Guest Conductor of the Minsk Opera House. Marcianò founded the Suoni dal Golfo Festival in his hometown overlooking the Gulf of Poets, renamed Lerici Music Festival in 2020. In 2017, he receives the Honorary Citizenship of the City of Lerici for his achievements and in 2018 has been awarded the Pavlova Award. His discography includes the album “Momento Immobile”, recorded for Rubicon Classics, with soprano Venera Gimadieva and Hallé Orchestra.