Baritono
World
Italian baritone Franco Vassallo has been acclaimed in many of the world leading opera houses for his skills as a singer and his intensity as a performer, beating the boards, among many others, of such theatres as Teatro alla Scala, Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden London, Opéra National de Paris, Bavarian State Opera Munich, Vienna State Opera, Staatsoper and Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Teatro Real de Madrid, Teatro San Carlo di Napoli.
Born in Milan, he discovered at a very early age his great enthusiasm for opera and classical music and began to study singing under the guidance of Carlo Meliciani, who encouraged him to attend the Civic School of Music in Milan. He has also studied Literature and Philosophy at the State University of Milan and he devoted much time to the study of Stanislavski’s Method, aware of the importance of acting skills for an opera performance.
Franco Vassallo’s singing career really took off in 1994 when he won the International Singing Competition AsLiCo in Milan, which gave him the chance to debut the roles of David in Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz and Belcore in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. In 1997 he won a competition for Arena di Verona that gave him the chance to sing the role of Ford alongside Renato Bruson in Verdi’s Falstaff.
In the first years of his career he had an outstanding success as Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, a role he debuted at Teatro La Fenice in Venice and then he performed almost everywhere worldwide as a benchmark. In the following years he specialised in Belcanto repertoire of Donizetti and Bellini. In his more mature years, besides remaining true to his Belcanto roots, Vassallo has developed as a great interpreter of Verdi baritone roles such as Simon Boccanegra, Ezio in Attila, Renato in Un ballo in maschera, the title role of Rigoletto, Macbeth, Nabucco, Jago in Otello, Conte di Luna in Il trovatore. Recently he has also successfully approached for the first time the pre-verist and verist repertoire with such roles as Scarpia in Tosca at Staatsoper Hamburg, Michele in Tabarro at Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Barnaba in Ponchielli‘s La Gioconda at La Monnaie in Brussels.
Franco Vassallo sings regularly under the baton of the world most important conductors and he has worked with Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Daniel Harding, James Levine, Marcello Viotti, Michele Mariotti and Gianandrea Noseda, just to name a few. Moreover he has worked with such directors as Robert Carsen, David McVicar, Hugo De Ana, Denis Krief, Christof Loy, Ermanno Olmi, Pierluigi Pizzi, Graham Vick and Franco Zeffirelli.
LATEST PERFORMANCES: La forza del destino in Bonn; Lucia di Lammermoor at Opera Carlo Felice di Genova; La Gioconda and La straniera (concert) at Teatro Bellini in Catania; Rigoletto in Frankfurt; in Catania; Otello at Seoul Arts Center; Il tabarro at Teatro Comunale di Bologna; Luisa Miller (concert version) at Teatro San Carlo di Napoli; Un ballo in maschera at Palau de les Arts Valencia; Tosca at Staatsoper Hamburg; Boito’s Nerone in Cagliari; Il trovatore and Falstaff at Festival Verdi Parma; Ernani at Bregenz Festival and in Valencia; I vespri siciliani in Bologna; I due Foscari in Genoa; Aida at Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.
FORTHCOMING PROJECTS: Andrea Chenier at Teatro Regio di Torino; Donizetti’s Dalinda (concert version) at Concertgebouw Amsterdam; Macbeth in Pisa, Ravenna and Rimini; Otello and Aida at Teatro Bellini in Catania; Otello in Bonn; Stiffelio at Theater an der Wien; Nabucco at Israeli Opera Tel Aviv.
