Holidays and... more Britten!

Hi everybody!

I'm writing from Italy, where I'm finally spending some relaxing free time with my family and friends after some concerts in the last 10 days. The last one was a concert performance in Lignano Sabbiadoro of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, where I was joined by my school days old friend baritone Giorgio Caoduro, and mezzo Silvia Regazzo, soprano Sara Pegoraro and pianist Alessandra Sagelli.

I'll be on holiday for the next few weeks, before coming back to England to start teaching again and work towards my next concerts. The first one will take place in Cambridge on Friday 10th November, when mezzo Bridget Hardy, pianist Ralph Woodward and I will be waiting for you for an all-Britten night - a group of gorgeous folksong arrangements, the fiery Michelangelo Sonnets, the bluesy Cabaret Songs and the heartbreaking duet canticle, Abraham and Isaac.

Visit https://bit.ly/greatbrittencambridge to get your ticket!

A Night of Opera in Ashley

Hi!

On Saturday 15th July at 7 pm, I will sing at this fundraising concert organised by the lovely people of St Mary's Church in Ashley accompanied by my friend Cedric Ghevaert.

We will perform Opera arias by Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, and Meyerbeer, salon pieces by Tosti and also a couple of Musical Theatre numbers!

Get your ticket from https://bit.ly/operainashley

I look forward to seeing you there!

Britten's Serenade

Hi everyone,

the recording of my last concert in Italy is online!

As I said in my last post, at the end of April I went back to Italy to perform Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with Guglielmo Pellarin, Orchestra San Marco and conductor Eddi De Nadai. I'm so happy I had the chance to sing such wonderful music, one of the most beautiful pieces Britten wrote for the voice of Peter Pears! I'm pleased I can share the recording of our performance with you:

If you want, please have a look at my YouTube channel: you'll find more of my performances and a few recordings of my singing teacher bass Alfredo Mariotti and other singers I love.

Hope you enjoy!

Spring Update!

The last few months have been quite eventful!

First of all, at the end of January, I had a super quick trip to Edinburgh to celebrate Burns Night! We got the tickets for the last concert of the Burns&Beyond Festival with Kinnaris Quintet and singers Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart. It was great to be again in Scotland!

The highlight of February was the visit to the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. Composer Luka Venter and poet David Bottomley are writing an opera about marine biology and lantern fish and visited BAS to get some first-hand info and gain some precious knowledge to proceed with their work, so my friend Jen (who is a researcher at BAS) invited me to join the party! It was an amazing day and I got to meet not only two very interesting artists but also some amazing scientists!

Luka, David, me, Jen & Lorena

At the beginning of March, I had my concert with Ralph Woodward in Cambridge: Italian Journey. We performed for a packed hall and I was very happy to share the Italian music with which I grew up for an English audience. It was particularly moving for me to sing, as an encore at the end of the concert, a popular song from my region, the touching melody of Stelutis Alpinis. Here you can listen to an extract:

Also, you can enjoy a short bit from Girometta, a very nice and funny Italian song:

The biggest event of the month - and indeed of my whole life - happened at the end of March (to be precise, at the very last few minutes of the month): my first daughter Nora Elizabeth arrived, and stole Mummy's and Daddy's hearts - and their sleep as well!

After only a few weeks, feeling a bit guilty for leaving home already, I went back to Italy to join horn player Guglielmo Pellarin, Orchestra San Marco and conductor Eddi De Nadai for my first concert as a dad! We were to perform Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings and I was very excited because it was my first time singing it. Britten's music holds a special place in my heart. I've been lucky to perform in his native Lowestoft with my friend and gorgeous singer Stephanie Lewis and in Aldeburgh in the church where he and Peter Pears are buried. Now, performing the Serenade is a dream coming true. And I couldn't ask for better companions for this new musical journey!

Orchestra San Marco

Me, Eddi De Nadai, Gugliemo Pellarin

Now, I have a couple of quiet months - if dealing with a 5 weeks baby can ever be quiet - before all the summer concerts!

Italian Journey - A Night of Opera in Cambridge

 My next concert in the UK will take place in Cambridge and I will be joined one more time by Ralph Woodward, a great pianist and a very good friend. Together, we will take the audience on an Italian Journey, an operatic trip to Rome, Venice, Mantua, and Naples in the company of Puccini, Verdi and Donizetti and their host of tenor heroes. And then we will perform enchanting salon pieces by Respighi, Tosti, and others, to admit us to a more intimate world with songs of love and devotion.

The concert will take place on Saturday 4th May at 6 pm at Michaelhouse Centre in Cambridge - save the date and visit this link to get your ticket!

Here you can get a little preview of the programme of the concert.

See you then!

Happy 2023!

Hi guys, here I am again!

I closed my last post dreaming of my soon-to-begin holiday but... music managed to sneak its way right in the middle of it! I was about to spend 10 wonderful days in Croatia, worrying only about swimming, eating, and not getting a sunburn, when the phone rang: "Hi Alessandro! Last minute concerts! We have the opportunity to repeat in Croatia two programmes we did earlier this year! Will you join us??". So I said, "actually, I'm going to Croatia for my holidays, you know...".

"Oh, come on - said the voice on the phone - everything's ready, you just need to show up on the day and have a quick rehearsal before the concert, please...". Luckily the concerts were close to where I was about to go, so, in the end, I said why not! These events turned out pretty fun - especially the one in Rijeka, where I had the chance to sing, accompanied by a big band, also something quite out of my usual repertoire: Cheek to Cheek, My Way... I had a good time and Claudia wasn't annoyed we had to hit the pause button on our holiday and she enjoyed the concerts as well!

Later, in October, I went back to Italy for the last part of the European Project which had brought me to Athens in May: I met again in Pordenone old and new friends from Italy, Portugal, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro to perform the now completed show "Bravo Bravissimo!", about the life and the music of Gioachino Rossini. I enjoyed a lot being part of it and we are now working to find opportunities to repeat it in the future.

On my return to England, Ralph Woodward and his Fairhaven Singers were waiting for me for two concerts in Cambridge. The first one was a moving Schubertiade at Cambridge URC, where I sang a few Lieder with Ralph at the piano and the beautiful Intende Voci for tenor, oboe, choir and piano 4 hands. For the second one, we moved to the magnificent Queens' College Chapel, where the choir performed some stunning masterpieces such as Nänie by Brahms and Ode to Death by Holst, and together we repeated Schubert's Intende Voci. Here's a pic from the rehearsal:

Between the end of November and early December, I had something different on my plate: a couple of trips to the studio recording!

First one in Cambridge: my ex student Nicholas asked me if I wanted to join him in recording the very popular aria Nessun dorma from Turandot by Puccini - as a duet. Nicholas is more of a rock singer, but gifted with an amazing voice, and we had not meet each other in a very long time as he now lives in another part of the country, so I happily accepted his proposal! It was great to find Nicholas keeping well - and the sound engineer had fun as well, used as he was to pop singers rather than operatic tenors! Anyway, here you can listen to what we did together - I hope you enjoy it!

My second appointment in a studio was in London, where I kicked off the recording sessions of a new composition written by Bob Stuckey on the poems by Anthony Howell. This is an exciting work, involving singers and performance artists, inspired by the great Basilica in the Roman town of Aquileia, not far from the place where I was born. Putting together all the parts of this huge work will be a tough job - for now we are getting a recording of the musical part, but I can't wait to start working with the performance artists!

But time flies, and soon the moment arrived to go home again (but not before meeting Ricky Gervais during a walk in snowy Cambridge!) and perform for the traditional Christmas Concert in my town. I invited my closest musical friends to join me on this occasion, and we had a wonderful time with the music of Mozart, Bach, Handel, and a few traditional Christmas carols!

Summer + Schubert = Happy Alessandro!

Hello guys!

It's been a while since the last time I posted something - let me try to recap what happened in the last few months!

First of all, some great news: in May I had the chance to perform for the first time in Athens! I had to step in for a colleague, so I joined a very interesting European project dedicated to Gioachino Rossini, involving musicians from Italy, Portugal, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. Here we are at the Topos Allous Theatre after the performance:

Of course, I could not leave without visiting the Acropolis, it is such an amazing place! After Athens, I went straight home to Italy to sing in an all-Disney concert: my friend Federico Lovato invited me to perform a few Disney songs with the amazing Anna Viola and Raffaele Prestinenzi, and the big band conducted by Igor Vlajnic. Here you can listen to me singing a little excerpt from the Italian version of Prince Ali from Aladdin - this was so fun!

So now back to Schubert - after a very exciting Winterreise (Winter Journey) in Cambridge in January, now between July and August I'm singing all 3 of Schubert's song cycles! At the beginning of July, I performed with Ralph Woodward Schwanengesang, the Swan's Song, which is a compilation of the songs Schubert wrote in his last months, before passing in October 1828. It was the first time I performed the whole cycle and the relaxed atmosphere of a private event in an XVIIIth Century country house provided the perfect environment for it:

A few weeks later, I came home to Italy and threw myself into work straight away: a concert performance of Traviata with my favorite Violetta, soprano Anna Viola, and then Ralph joined me to repeat Schubert's Winterreise in Lignano Sabbiadoro, the seaside town where I grew up:

I was very happy to spend a few days with Ralph and his partner Anna in Italy, rehearsing, eating fish, and visiting together some of the places of my childhood!

Now, after a little Gershwinian digression which took place last week, again with Anna and Raffaele and the amazing jazz pianist Rudy Fantin, it's Schubert time again! Next week I will join my old friend Michele Bravin to sing, again in Lignano Sabbiadoro, what is actually the first of the song cycles written by Schubert: Die Schöne Müllerin, The Fair Maid of the Mill. It is also the cycle I have performed more often - even though not in the last few years - so it will be a sort of musical homecoming for me and I very much look forward to it.

Performing Die Schöne Müllerin, Winterreise, and Schwanengesang by Franz Schubert it's a very demanding job, and doing it in such a short amount of time is a long-cherished dream. I am really happy the time has finally come for it to become true and, let me say, I am quite proud of myself for this achievement!

Only a few days more of practicing and rehearsing, then I will finally enjoy a couple of weeks of holiday!

Schubert in Cambridge

Hello everybody!

Yesterday's concert in Cambridge with Ralph Woodward was my first Lieder recital here in the UK: I've always been very passionate about this repertoire and I was very happy to finally share my love for Schubert's music with the British audience. Schubert's Winterreise (Winter Journey) is one of the most demanding works to perform, 75 minutes of wonderful music, no intermission, a real journey into hell as we follow the protagonist in his wandering through the wintery landscape and his descent into despair and madness. No human beings on his path, just traces of them - an abandoned hut, a graveyard, the distant lights of a village and the sound of the dogs barking - and snow, ice, wild animals and the longing for death. Only at the end, our Wanderer will meet another human being, an old hurdy-gurdy player, alone in his misery, and for the first time he will be able to speak to someone other than himself: "Can I come with you? Would you play your instrument to my songs?". And so the story starts again, in an eternal reliving of his pain through his songs.

I feel very lucky and so grateful to have the opportunity to perform this masterpiece - and to do it with the wonderful Ralph Woodward!

This concert marked my return to Schubert's Winterreise since before the pandemic (I was working on this programme at the time of the first lockdown in 2020 and so we had to postpone the concert) - let's hope that this is a good omen and we will now finally able to go back to our normal lives!

More Schubert to come later this year, to mark the composer's 225th birthday!

Winterreise

 Hi everybody and happy New Year!

I hope you had a good time during the past Christmas holidays - I was able to go back to Italy and spend some time with family and friends!

I'm back in Newmarket now, and looking forward to many wonderful things in 2022 - the first one will be another concert with pianist Ralph Woodward: on Saturday 22nd of January we will perform, for the first time together, Franz Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ (‘Winter Journey’), one of Western art-song’s greatest masterpieces. The twenty-four songs tell the story of the poet’s reaction to being jilted, as he paces the wintry landscape, alone and in shock. It’s a study in grief, a searing psychological monodrama, and it contains some of Schubert’s most haunting music.

The concert will take place at the Downing Place United Reformed Church in Cambridge and to book your ticket (£10 - students £5) please drop a message to ralphwoodwardtickets@live.co.uk.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Salon Concert

 Hi everybody!

I am very happy to announce the first of a (hopefully) long series of the Newmarket Music Box Salon Concerts! We will meet in Joanne's living room in Bottisham on Sunday 5th of December, aiming at recreating the magic of the "true" chamber music, as it happened for many centuries when musicians gathered in private salons.

With "The Romantic Tenor" pianist Ralph Woodward and I will have a look into the evolution of the tenor voice and roles throughout the Romantic Era, featuring music by Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini and a glimpse into what was happening in France and Germany. 

To get one of the last tickets available, visit Newmarket Music Box's website!

I look forward to seeing you there!

Teaching

 Hello everybody!

I am finally back in Newmarket and it's time to restart with my lessons!

I've already met some of my students after the summer break and I look forward to seeing all of them and working together to help them to achieve their goals. If you are interested in Piano or Singing lessons, or you need help with music theory, or you are a singer who could use some help dealing with Italian and French or a hand to prepare new pieces, contact me and I will be happy to help!

I look forward to hearing from you!