Gianluca Zampieri

Prague State Opera guest artist

Tenor Gianluca Zampieri was born in Venice. He studied opera singing in Vienna, among others with one of the 20th century’s greatest tenors, Franco Corelli. While still a student, in 1992 he made his debut as Don José in Carmen, at the Vienna Open Air Festival. From 1992, when he won in the Mattia Battistini Opera Competition in Rieti, Italy, his career started to develop fast, making him one of Europe’s most sought-after tenors. He has guest appeared in the leading opera houses of Italy (Bologna, Venice, Genoa, Rome, Palermo, Catania, Turin, etc.), and the rest of the world (Bonn, Lima, Zurich, Budapest, Prague, Bratislava, Monte Carlo, Taipei).

Figuring in the gallery of roles in his repertoire are among others the title part of Guntram in Richard Strauss’ eponymous opera, which he sang at the Teatro Bellini in Catania; Siegfried in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, and Tristan in Tristan und Isolde, at the music festival at Erl, Tyrol, under the baton of Gustav Kuhn (2007); Verdi’s Otello, whom he performed in Ankara, and at the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe (2009). In the Czech repertoire, he has to his credit the Prince in Dvořák’s Rusalka, Laca in Janáček’s Jenůfa, and Manolios in Martinů’s The Greek Passion – all three sung with huge success on the stage of the National Theatre of Moravia and Silesia in Ostrava. His creation of Laca earned him the Best Male Performance award from the Opera 2005 Festival. His other awards in the Czech Republic have included the 2008 Thalia Prize, for the title part of Cyrano de Bergerac in the opera by Franco Alfano, again for the Ostrava opera. He sang the same role at Karlsruhe. In the autumn of 2007, he made his debut as Bacchus in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, at the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava, and in the following year made a guest appearance in the same part on the stage of the National Theatre in Prague.

His other recent commitments have included work at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome (as the Prince in Rusalka), at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City (as Laca in Jenůfa), the Teatro Goldoni of Livorno (Giordano’s Andrea Chénier), and the Ostrava opera (as Nanni in Marco Tutino’s opera La lupa, and as Canio in Leoncavallo’s I pagliacci). His latest Czech opera creations have been the parts of Albert Gregor in Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair (National Theatre in Prague), and Smetana’s Dalibor (National Theatre of Moravia and Silesia in Ostrava). In 2010 he has so far debuted as Tannhäuser at the Teatro Verdi di Trieste. He has been guest appearing in the Prague State Opera’s productions of Tosca (Cavaradossi), and Aida (Radames). Gianluca Zampieri currently lives in Rome. Outside opera houses, he appears regularly in programmes of the Italian television company, RaI.

For detailed information, see www.gianluca-zampieri.com.