Romina Basso

The mezzo-soprano Romina Basso, who was born in Gorizia on the Italian-Slovenian border, received her vocal training at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice and additionally completed a degree in Italian literature at the University of Trieste. Major influences have included her master classes with Peter Maag, Regina Resnik, Rockwell Blake, Claudio Desderi, Elio Battaglia, and Claudio Strudthoff. She launched her career as the winner of the prestigious Concorso Internazionale per Cantanti Toti dal Monte. Early on Basso started specializing in the music of the Baroque era, and she has been sought after as a Vivaldi performer ever since, whether onstage or for her numerous recordings of his operas. She has worked with renowned early music ensembles, including with Ottavio Dantone and the Accademia Bizantina, Rinaldo Alessandrini and the Concerto Italiano, Fabio Biondi and L’Europa Galante, Chiara Banchini and Ensemble 415, Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre, and William Christie and Les Arts Florissants. Romina Basso also had a close relationship with the late American conductor Alan Curtis, who died in 2015, under whose direction she recorded Vivaldi’s Catone in Utica and Handel’s Giu-lio Cesare, Berenice,and Tolomeo. In recent seasons Basso has been a regular guest artist at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and the Theater an der Wien, where she recently appeared in Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula and in Gluck’s Demofoonte. In the 2015-16 season so far she has performed the role of Irene in Handel’s Tamerlano at the Barbican Centre in London and took part in a production of Handel’s Partenope at La Coruña conducted by Riccardo Minasi.

February 2016