Elisa Balbo is a lyric soprano that has came to international attention thanks to her luminous and silky voice combined with her great musicality and expressive acting.
Balbo has appeared in some among the world’s major theatres such as Arena di Verona, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino , Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, il Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, La Fenice di Venezia, la Wiener Konzerthaus di Vienna, il Ravenna Festival, il Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, il Teatro Bellini di Catania, l’Enescu Festival, il Bunka Mura di Tokyo, l’International Music Hall di Mosca, Teatro Grande Rubinstein Rimskij-Korsakov di San Pietroburgo, Festival Rossini in Wildbad, Ljubjana Festival.
Soprano gifted with remarkable vocal and stylistic ductlity, Balbo has a wide repertoire that includes Rossini (Armida, Maometto II, Moïse, Tancredi, Petite Messe Solennelle, Stabat Mater), Pergolesi ( La serva padrona), Bellini (Adalgisa in Norma) Mozart ( (Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Requiem), Schumann (Margherita in Szenen aus Goethes Faust), Verdi (Otello, Alice in Falstaff), Puccini (Mimì e Musetta ne La Bohème, Liu in Turandot), Bizet (Micaela in Carmen), Leoncavallo (Pagliacci), Giordano (Siberia), Gomez (Contessa in Lo schiavo), Lehár (Hanna in La vedova allegra), Bernstein (Trouble in Tahiti). She has worked with eminent conductors, including Riccardo Muti. Her live recordings include Rossini’s Maometto II and Moïse for Naxos and Gomes’ Lo Schiavo for Dynamic.
In 2022, Balbo first chamber music album ” Lunaria -Songs to the moon“, recerded with pianist Michele D’Elia, was released (Illiria).
Among her recent and upcoming engagements: Adalgisa in Bellini’s Norma for the season opening in Catania, Musetta in Florence, Liu in Torre del Lago, the world premiere of Colasanti’s opera L’ultimo viaggio di Sindbad in Rome, and a tour of Beethoven’s IX Symphony with Canova Orchestra.
Elisa began her vocal training at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, where she graduated cum laude under the guidance of Cristina Rubin. She than pursued her studies, with dedication, with soprano Patrizia Orciani. Balbo’s professional carreer started in 2013, with the Pavarotti Foundation that allowed her to perform, at a very young age, on important stages form Broadway (New York), to Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, from Teatro Comunale di Modena, to the Arena di Verona, among others. In 2013, she was also chosen as a soloist by Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai for the Verdi and Wagner commemorative concerts, broadcasted on Italian TV channel RAI5, under the baton of Daniele Rustioni. She performed again at Auditorium Toscanini in Turin, in yet another Verdi concert with Andrea Battistoni conducting.
Balbo firstly appeared on the operatic scene in 2013, as Alice in Verdi’s Falstaff at Teatro del Giglio in Lucca, in a Ravenna Festival production by Cristina Mazzavillani Muti. Still a student, she sang the role of Stephana in Giordano’s Siberia at the Rubinstein Rimskij-Korsakov Theatre in Saint Petersburg, role she performed again in 2014 in a concert version at the Verdi Hall in Milan. She studied and sang Rossini, debuting as Anna Erisso in Maometto II at Rossini in Wildbad (Germany), under the baton of Antonino Fogliani; the show was broadcasted live on the national radio and the recording eventually became a notable CD recording for NAXOS Classical. Other Rossini roles Balbo brought to the stage in Wildbad are Anaï in Moïse et Pharaon, Fabrizio Maria Carminati conducting (again broadcasted on the national radio and than published by NAXOS Classical) and Amenaide in Tancredi, again with Antonino Fogliani. Return to Rossini in 2024 with the title role inArmida at the Manoel Theater, Malta.
Elisa also sang several Verdi roles, among which Desdemona in Otello (Ravenna Festival), Violetta in La Traviata in the Japanese tour of Teatro Comunale di Bologna.
In 2014, she debuted as Mimi at Teatro Filarmonico di Verona in Puccini’s La Bohèmerole that she encountered again in 2016 at Teatro Vittorio Emanuele di Messina. In 2017, she was Liu in Turandot in Sassari, Francesco Ivan Ciampa conducting. She returned to Liu with great personal success for the 2024 season opening at Teatro Bellini di Catania. She played the role of Micaela in Bizet’s Carmen in Ravenna, Ferrara and Lucca, and she went into the Verismo repertoire singing Nedda in Pagliacci (Leoncavallo) at Teatro Lirico in Cagliari in Gabriele Lavia’s acclaimed production.
As a rare-repertoire-enthusiast <br>and research-devotee,
Balbo sang the impervious role of the Countess of Boissy in Lo Schiavo (Gomes) at Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, with great public and critical acclaim. The magazine Gramophone hailed the DVD recording of Lo Schiavo, published by Dynamic, as “best new classical album: January 2020”. With a passion for particular and precious opera projects, in 2021 she was Serpina and Dinah (in La Serva Padrona and Trouble in Taihiti respectively, the two operas presented as a diptych) with baritone Luca Micheletti, in a production filmed at Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova and broadcasted nationally This diptych was presented live at Teatro Carlo Felice in 2022, with unanimous public and critical acclaim. In 2021, again at the Ravenna Festival, she portrayed, with great personal success, the roles of Marguerita and The Cure, in Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust, in a visionary staging straddling prose and symphonic music, in a modern time premiere of the Italian version by Vittorio Radicati.
Moreover, after a few years since her debut at Teatro Filarmonico in Verona in The Merry Widow, and after the opening of the summer season 2021 at Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Elisa was again the rich Hanna Glawari in December 2021 and January 2022 at Teatro Carlo Felice in Genova, role that she encountered once more in Treviso later in 2022.
Sensitive to sacred<br>and symphonic music
Elisa sang José Cura’s oratory Ecce Homo (Maria) at Ljubljana Festival and Festival Enescu with the London Philarmonia. She appeared at the Moscow International Music House singing Carmina Burana and at Teatro Lirico di Cagliari singing Mendelsohn-Bartholdy‘s Symphony No.2 op. 52. Balbo’s repertoire also includes Saint-Sëans’ Oratorie de Noël (Duomo di Milano) Mozart Requiem (Japan tour with Orchestra Rossini di Pesaro) and Strauss’ Vier Letze Lieder. Remarkable are Balbo’s renditions of Rossini’s oratoires Petite Messe Solennelle (Teatro dell’Opera di Roma) and Stabat Mater (Teatro Rossini in Pesaro).
Significant is also Elisa’s concert activity for big audiences, most notably a world tour with tenor Andrea Bocelli. Since 2013, she has taken part to opera galas at Arena di Verona and numerous events in Italy and Europe, among which stands out her debut at the prestigious Wiener Konzerthaus for the 2017 New Year concert.
“voce di perla”
“voce di perla”
“voce di perla”
“voce di perla”
“voce di perla”
“voce di perla”
Liricamente
