Marcello Giordani

Born in Sicily in 1963, Giordani began his working life in banking but moved to Milan to study singing seriously in his early twenties and made his professional opera debut in Spoleto aged 23 as the Duke in Rigoletto. With his robust, open sound and powerful, ringing upper register, Giordani soon found himself in demand for heavier spinto roles, but by the early 1990s he was concerned that his voice was ageing prematurely and relocated to New York to overhaul his technique with the American voice-teacher Bill Schuman; he continued to sing regularly during his quest to regain what he called the ‘sunshine’ in his voice, focusing on pure lyric and bel canto roles.

The relocation to the US heralded the beginning of a long-standing relationship with the Metropolitan Opera, where Giordani would notch up almost 250 performances over the course of two decades in roles including Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini, Gualtiero in Bellini’s Il Pirata (both house premieres of the works) and Gabriele Adorno in Simon Boccanegra; his decision to bide his time before tackling the heftier Italian roles paid off when he reached his forties, and he enjoyed considerable success at the Met as Dick Johnson, Radamès, Calàf, and Ernani. In 2010 he set up the Marcello Giordani Foundation, a non-profit organisation to support and promote emerging singers, and though he continued to perform regularly in Europe during his fifties, the last few years of his career were primarily focused on nurturing young talent.

Giordani died suddenly of a heart-attack at home in Sicily on 5th October 2019, surrounded by his family

Find out more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcello_Giordani

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