Paolo Fanale

The tenor Paolo Fanale, who was born in 1982 in Palermo, Sicily, completed his vocal training with Domenico Sanfilippo and Miguel Sánchez Moreno at the Bellini Conservatory in his native city. In 2004 he won the International Giuseppe di Stefano Singing Competition, followed by first prize in the Toulouse Competition in 2008. In 2006 Fanale made his debut at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna with Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins. Since then his career has been on a rapid ascent, taking him not only to all the leading Italian opera companies but to the most renowned stages around the world. The role of Fenton in Falstaff has become one of his signatures: he has performed the part at the Opéra National de Paris, New Israeli Opera (under Zubin Mehta), the Metropolitan Opera in New York (under James Levine), Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam (under Daniele Gatti), and, most recently, in July 2015, at the Royal Opera House in London, with Antonio Pappano conducting. Other credits include Ferrando in Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the Bavarian Staatsoper, Hylas in Berlioz’s Les Troyens at La Scala in Milan, and Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the New National Theater in Tokyo. Among his engagements for the 2015-16 season are Rinuccio in a new production of Gianni Schicchi in London, and at the end of the coming year he is scheduled to make his debut at the Vienna Staatsoper. Fanale’s repertoire ranges from Handel and Gluck through Mozart and bel canto to French opera and operetta. He has also worked with conductors from the early-music scene, including Jordi Savall and Jean-Christophe Spinosi, and in the concert hall he has performed in Mozart’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Mass in C major, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, and Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus.

August 2015