Luis Ernesto Alva y Talledo, better known as Luigi Alva is a Peruvian operatic tenor. A Mozart and Rossini specialist, Alva achieved fame with roles such as Don Ottavio, Count Almaviva and Fenton. He retired from the stage in 1989.
June Anderson is a Grammy Award-winning American coloratura soprano. She is known for bel canto performances of Rossini, Donizetti, and Vincenzo Bellini.
Juan Diego Flórez is a Peruvian operatic tenor, particularly known for his roles in bel canto operas. On June 4, 2007, he received his country's highest decoration, the Knight Grand Cross in the Order of the Sun of Peru.
Gianluigi Gelmetti OMRI, was an Italian-Monégasque conductor and composer.
Ruggero Raimondi is an Italian bass-baritone opera singer who has also appeared in motion pictures.
Ramón Vargas is a Mexican operatic tenor. Since his debut in the early '90s, he has developed to become one of the most acclaimed tenors of the 21st century. Known for his most expressive and agile lyric tenor voice, he is especially successful in the bel canto repertoire.
Bruno Campanella is an Italian conductor and a distinguished interpreter of the Italian Opera.
Filippo Galli was an Italian opera singer who began his career as a tenor in 1801 but went on to become one of the most acclaimed basses of the bel canto era, with a voice known for its wide range, extreme agility, and expressivity, and a remarkable gift for acting.
Joyce DiDonato is an American lyric-coloratura mezzo-soprano. She is notable for her interpretations of operas and concert works in the 19th-century romantic era in addition to works by Handel and Mozart.
Francesco Meli is an Italian operatic tenor particularly associated with the romantic repertoire. He began his vocal studies at age 17 with Norma Palacios at the Conservatorio di Musica "Niccolò Paganini" in Genoa. He later became a pupil of mezzo-soprano Franca Mattiucci. In 2002 he debuted in Verdi's Macbeth and as the tenor soloist in Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle and Puccini's Messa di Gloria, broadcast by RAI from the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. He has gone on to sing leading roles in La Scala, The Metropolitan Opera, Teatro Regio di Torino, London's Royal Opera House, Opéra National de Lyon, Zurich Opera, and the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. In 2017, he made his debut as Verdi's Don Carlo at La Scala and as Radames in Salzburg next to Anna Netrebko's Aida.
Barry Banks is a Grammy Nominated English/American lyric tenor who, after a long association with The Metropolitan Opera and English National Opera, has achieved acclaim as one of finest interpreters of the Italian bel canto repertoire.
Carmen Giannattasio is an Italian operatic soprano. She studied at the Conservatoire Domenico Cimarosa of Avellino and simultaneously at the University of Salerno. From 1999 to 2001 she attended the school for young opera singers at La Scala, Milan. In 2002 she won first and audience prize at Operalia competition in Paris.
Maxim Vyacheslavovich Mironov, is a Russian tenor, best known for his interpretation of the bel canto repertoire. In 2001, he joined the Helikon Opera Theatre in Moscow, where he made his operatic debut in André Grétry's opera Pierre le Grand. Mironov won the 2nd Prize at the Neue Stimmen international singing competition in Germany in 2003. In Europe Mironov has performed in many opera houses.
Juan Francisco Gatell (born November 28, 1978 in La Plata, Argentina Juan Francisco Gatell is an Argentinian operatic tenor who specialises in the bel canto repertoire.
Antonino Fogliani is an Italian conductor.
Riccardo Frizza is an Italian conductor, particularly known for his work in the Italian operatic repertoire. After making his professional conducting debut in 2001 with Rossini's Stabat Mater at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, he went on to conduct in the leading opera houses of Europe and the United States, including La Scala, La Fenice. the Paris Opera, and New York's Metropolitan Opera.
Michele Mariotti, born in 1979 in Urbino, near Pesaro, is an Italian conductor, the direttore musicale since 2014 of Teatro Comunale di Bologna. A graduate in composition of Pesaro's Conservatorio Rossini, where he also studied orchestral conducting, he made his professional opera debut with Il barbiere di Siviglia in Salerno on Oct. 12, 2005. As of April 2017, his repertory included nine Rossini and eight Verdi operas, an extraordinary achievement, as well as symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner and Schubert, the Rossini Stabat mater, the Mozart Requiem and the Verdi Requiem.
Amelia Felle is an Italian operatic soprano and voice teacher. Born in Bari, she has been active on the stages of Italian and European opera houses and concert halls since her debut in 1981. She holds the chair in vocal chamber music at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome, a position she previously held at the Conservatorio Tito Schipa in Lecce.
Simone Alberghini is an Italian operatic baritone, known especially for his interpretations of belcanto operas of Mozart and Rossini.
The Rossini Bicentennial Birthday Gala is a live album of operatic and sacred music by Gioachino Rossini, performed by Rockwell Blake, Craig Estep, Maria Fortuna, Thomas Hampson, George Hogan, Marilyn Horne, Kathleen Kuhlmann, Mimi Lerner, Chris Merritt, Jan Opalach, Samuel Ramey, Henry Runey, Frederica von Stade, Deborah Voigt, the Concert Chorale of New York and the Orchestra of St. Luke's under the direction of Sir Roger Norrington. It was released in 1993 as a 119-minute video album and in 1994 as a 78-minute CD.
