Annalisa Stroppa

Annalisa Stroppa (born in Brescia ) is an Italian opera singer with a mezzo-soprano voice .

life and work

Annalisa Stroppa started playing the piano as a little girl. She studied education at the University of Brescia and singing at the Luca Marenzio Conservatory in Brescia. She completed both studies with honors. She took part in several competitions and won a few, including the 2010 Concorso lirico Riccardo Zandonai in Riva del Garda .

She appears regularly in well-known concert halls, was heard in a duet with Plácido Domingo at the Operalia Gala in Pécs, Hungary, and sang several times with Andrea Bocelli - in Lajatico , in the Vatican and in her native city. In Dallas she took on the mezzo part in Berlioz ' Les nuits d'été with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jaap Van Zweden . She has made guest appearances in St. Petersburg , Taipei and Toronto , sang Rossini's Petite Messe solennelle at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino , Mozart's Requiem at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Verdi's Messa da Requiem at the Berliner Philharmonie with the Berliner Philharmoniker and at the Ljubljana Festival .

On the opera stage, she demonstrated versatility and joy in playing. She embodies the innocent Zerlina, the refined Rosina with her pearly coloratura and the tragic figure of Adalgisa like trousers roles - Cherubino, Orfeo, Romeo, Hansel. Riccardo Muti signed her at the beginning of her career in 2010 as the cover for the Parti des Carmi in La Betulia liberata and in 2011 as the first line-up for Cherubino in Mercadantes I due Figaro , presented first at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival , then at the Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna, and finally in Madrid and Buenos Aires. Just as international as her career began, as well as in her home country: In Italy, Annalisa Stroppa has appeared on almost every opera stage, in the smaller theaters as well as in Rome, Florence, Turin, Naples and at La Scala .

Her repertoire is broad and includes the title role of Georges Bizet's Carmen , in which she made her debut at the Teatro Lirico in Spoleto in 2010 . She also sang Carmen in Trento, Limoges and Palma de Mallorca. In 2017 and 2018 she was Carmen in Kasper Holten's new production as part of the Bregenz Festival on the Bregenz lake stage . In Perugia she interpreted the short version of the opera for chamber ensemble, La tragédie de Carmen (prepared by the director Peter Brook and the arranger Marius Constant in 1981 for the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris). In Rovigo, in the Teatro San Carlo in Naples and in the Teatro Regio in Turin, she took on the smaller role of Mercedes at the beginning of her career in the same opera.

The Cherubino in Mozart's Nozze di Figaro is the trouser role that she interpreted most often - next to Stéphano in Roméo et Juliette , which she sang in Bozen, Genoa, Modena, Piacenza and in the Arena di Verona . She took over Mozart's Cherubino in Cagliari, there conducted by Hubert Soudant , in Modena, Piacenza and finally at the Opéra de Lausanne , there conducted by Theodor Guschlbauer . In stark contrast to the confused young man in Mozart's Figaro is the female main character in Rossini's Barbiere di Siviglia , the flirtatious and sophisticated Rosina. After her role debut in 2012 at the Roman Opera , conducted by Bruno Campanella , the singer travels across Europe in this role - she embodied Rosina at the Teatro Liceu in Barcelona, in Bilbao and at the Opéra de Monte Carlo , at the Deutsche Oper Berlin , the Staatsoper Unter den Linden there and the Semperoper in Dresden, at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa and again in Rome in 2014, now in open-air performances in the thermal baths of Caracalla , and also in Lausanne, Tel Aviv and Verona. The Rosina performances planned for April 2020 at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich had to be canceled due to COVID-19 .

She embodied Adalgisa, opponent of the high priestess Norma in the Bellini Opera of the same name, at at least nine opera houses, at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, at the Teatro Liceu in Barcelona and in Valladolid, at the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden and at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, in Genoa, Naples, Padua and Palermo. She has also been announced in this role at the Teatro Real in Madrid for March 2021 . The Fenena, daughter of Nabucco and hostage of the Israelites, in the Verdi Opera is another role that she has taken on various stages - in Florence, Milan, Palermo and Parma as well as at the Teatre Principal de Maó in Menorca . The artist sang Puccini's Suzuki, Madama Butterfly's loyal servant , for the first time in 2015 at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, in December 2016 in a festive premiere at the opening of the season at La Scala in Milan and in April 2019 in Munich. The original version from 1904 was given in Milan. It was staged by Alvis Hermanis and conducted by Riccardo Chailly , Scala Music Director. At the Teatro alla Scala Annalisa Stroppa opened the season twice in a row, after 2016 also in 2017, in Andrea Chénier at the side of Anna Netrebko and again under the direction of Riccardo Chailly. In January 2020 she returned to Scala as Stéphano in Roméo et Juliette (Gounod) .

Some of the other places of activity were the Salzburg Easter Festival (Lola), the Hamburg State Opera (Cenerentola), the Vienna State Opera , the Opéra de Rouen Normandie and the Teatro Verdi in Sassari (always as Dorabella), De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam (Ines and Maddalena) and the arena of the Théâtre Antique di Orange (Zerlina). She sang under the musical direction of the conductors Karel Mark Chichon , Teodor Currentzis , Zubin Mehta , Nello Santi and Lorenzo Viotti .

She was the first Italian opera singer to appear again in front of an audience in May 2020 after the coronavirus pandemic - as Carmen without a choir and without an orchestra at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden as part of the International May Festival . She dedicated her performance to all those affected and to her colleagues behind the stage who made her return to the stage possible.

In June 2020 she was in Bergamo , one of the epicenters of COVID-19 pandemic , as alto soloist in Gaetano Donizetti 's Messa da Requiem heard. The memorial concert for the victims of the pandemic was broadcast in the presence of the Italian President Sergio Mattarella on the TV channel Rai 1 and followed by 2.3 million viewers.