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Mara
Zampieri, soprano, was born in Padua in 1951. She received
her musical training at the Padua Conservatoire, ‘C.
Pollini’ in her hometown. The winner of prestigious international
awards, including the Beniamino Gigli of Macerata, the Giuseppe
Verdi of Parma and the AS.LI.CO of Milan, she made her debut
in 1972 at the Fraschini Theatre in Pavia.
She began her career with performances at the major Italian
theatres in Rome, Trieste, Palermo, Naples, Bologna, Catania,
and Milan, where she appeared at the Teatro alla Scala in
Il Trovatore, Don Carlo, I Masnadieri, Il Ballo in Maschera
(conducted by Claudio Abbado and broadcast internationally)
and in 1991 in La Fanciulla del West with Placido Domingo.
Since 1976 she has appeared at the opera houses of Europe:
London. Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Brussels, Paris, Lisbon,
Zurich, Madrid, Barcelona and Vienna.
Her
repertoire includes over fifty works (of which 21 are roles
in operas by Verdi) ranging from Gluck to R. Strauss. While
favouring the bel canto repertoire (Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda,
Roberto Devereux, Belisario, Il Pirata, Norma etc.) she also
fits perfectly into the roles of Puccini’s great heroines
(Tosca, Manon Lescaut, La Fanciulla del West, Il Trittico,
Le Villi) and yet again as Wally, Adriana Lecouvreur, Francesca
da Rimini, Fedora and Salome (she was the first Italian performer
to sing to the original German libretto of Strauss’s
opera in Vienna). She has sung in San Francisco, New York,
San Paulo, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, conducted by such great names
as Sinopoli, Oren, Maazel, Muti, Ozawa and Abbado under the
direction of Ronconi, Faggioni and Zeffirelli.
She lent her voice to the parts of Teresa Stolz in the film
"La vita di Verdi" by Castellani, and Ildebranda
Cuffari in the film "E la nave va" by Federico Fellini.
In
1990, after her first acclaimed Liederabend in Munich, she
dedicated herself to chamber music with a pianoforte accompaniment.
Five years later she started a trio with pianoforte and cello,
and was invited to perform at the major international festivals:
Graz, Villach, Bratislava, Zagreb, Bregenz, Hamburg, Athens,
Zurich, Vienna (Musikverein and Konzerthaus) and Eisenstadt
(Haydn Festspielen). Her repertoire of chamber music (both
with the trio and with the pianoforte alone) ranges from classical
composers: Mozart, Brahms, Mercadante, Donizetti and Proch,
to the twentieth century, with Menotti, Ned Rorem and others.
In 2004 she recorded a new CD entitled Novecento italiano,
rare songs, in which she collected what are for her the most
significant songs by 20th century Italian composers such as
Cilea, Respighi, Pizzetti, Petrassi, Menotti etc.
She
has received numerous musical awards including the Gold Medal
from the Italian Red Cross, The Medalha de Mérito Cultural
from Portugal. Moreover, she is Kammersängerin
and "Ehrenmitglied der Wiener Staatsoper" (Honorary
Member of the Vienna Opera House). She has recently founded
the cultural association, Musicaincanto in Padua, whose aims
include making twentieth-century Italian music better known,
and discovering and training talented young singers.
Further
information on her life and achievements can be found in numerous
international publications: Opera by András Batta,
Ed. Könemann, Grosse Stimmen by Jens Malte Fischer, Ed.
Metzler, Grosse Sänger by Margret Wenzel-Jelinek and
Karlheinz Roschitz, Ed. Kremayr & Scheriau, Oper
live by P. Dusek and H. Koller, ed. Verlag der
Österreichischen Staatsdruckerei, Grosse interpreten
by Sabine Keck and Floria Jannucci, Ed. Westermann, Opernlexikon
by Horst Seeger, Ed. Henschelverlag Kunst & Gesellschaft
Berlin, the biography of Egon Seefehlner Die Musik meines
Lebens, Ed. Paul Neff and in the books by Claus Helmut Drese
and Marcel Prawy.
In
2003 she inaugurated the Festival do Estoril in Lisbon and
the Symphonic Season in Prague (Smetana Saal) with two concerts
dedicated to Hector Berlioz on the bicentenary of his birth.
After her debut as Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer in
Berlin, she gave her first concert performances of Morte di
Isotta from Tristan und Isolde and of the Wesendonk Lieder
by Wagner (Malaga, June 2004: Cervantes Theatre, Malaga Philharmonic
Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Rahabari)
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