Stefania Bonfadelli

She started her international career as a lyric coloratura soprano from a very young age at the Staatsoper in Vienna, the theatre in which she sang all the main roles of the nineteenth-century bel canto repertoire: Lucia di Lammermoor, Rigoletto, Romeo et Juliette, I Puritani, La Sonnambula, La Traviata, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Olympia ne Les Contes d’Hoffmann.

Some of the great theatres in which she has performed include the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London with La Traviata, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, with Lucia and La Traviata, the Staatsoper in Munich with La Traviata under the direction of Zubin Mehta, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan with Les Dialogues des Carmelites directed by Riccardo Muti and La Sonnambula, the Maestranza in Seville with La Traviata directed by Placido Domingo, the Bolshoj in Mosca with La Traviata directed by Franco Zeffirelli, in Washington with La Figlia del reggimento, the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan with Così fan tutte directed by Sejij Ozawa, La Traviata, Rigoletto, Fille du regiment, and Falstaff on tour with the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, directed by Zubin Mehta, and in Italy, the San Carlo in Naples with La Traviata and Il Convitato di pietra, by Giacomo Tritto, the Teatro Verdi in Trieste with Lucia di Lammermoor, Les Contes D’Hoffmann, Manon by Massenet, La Traviata all directed by Daniel Oren, the Carlo Felice in Genoa with Lucia di Lammermoor, Rigoletto and Don Pasquale, the Teatro Comunale in Bologna with Le Comte Ory, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo with L’Elisir D’amore, the Teatro Bellini in Catania with La Sonnambula, I Puritani and Le Nozze di Figaro.

She sang at the Rossini opera festival as the protagonist of La Gazzetta directed by Dario Fo and Le Comte Ory, filmed at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, recorded for Deutsche Grammophon and the Martina Franca festival with Crispino e la Comare. She has been a teacher of the “art of coloratura” at the Accademia Rodolfo Celletti (Academy of Rodolfo Celletti) in Martina Franca since 2010. In 2004 she sang for the reopening of the Teatro La Fernice in Venice in the first New Year’s concert by the Venetian theatre, broadcasted worldwide, under the direction of Lorin Mazel.

In October 2016 she made her debut as an opera director at the Opera in Tenerife in Don Pasquale by Gaetano Donizetti, which was a great personal success. In the summer of 2017 she directed Un giorno di regno by Verdi, at the Martina Franca festival, which was a great success with the public and the press: Enrico Girardi, music critic of the Corriere della Sera newspaper, defined her directing as “the authentic surprise of the Festival of Martina Franca 2017”. She directed the comedy Maria Callas master class by Terrence Mc.Nally, with Mascia Musy in the lead role, in a show promoted by the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Academy of Santa Cecilia) and staged at the Parco della Musica on 16th September 2017, the date of the fortieth anniversary of the death of the great diva. This show went on tour from November 2018 and was hosted in Rome at the Teatro della Cometa, at the Teatro Stabile in Genoa and at the Teatro Stabile in Turin. Her next engagement as an opera director will still be at the Opera in Tenerife with Il viaggio a Reims, then L’occasione fa il ladro at the Olimpico in Vicenza and Matilde di Shabran at the Rossini in Wildbad Festival.
She obtained a degree in Literature, Music and Performing Arts at the “La Sapienza” University of Rome with a thesis on the history of opera directing.