Паоло Руджеро

A master's degree in flute from the Bari Conservatory, musicology at Bologna, then contemporary dance and spoken theatre: Paolo Ruggiero reached opera by a long way round, and began there in the choruses of the Teatro Petruzzelli and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Comprimario parts led to principal ones, and his repertoire now runs past forty roles — Nabucco, Macbeth, Rigoletto, Amonasro, Germont, Renato, Ford, Di Luna, Don Giovanni, Figaro, Scarpia, Gianni Schicchi, Marcello, Lescaut, Gérard, Escamillo, Barnaba. He has sung at the Teatro Regio di Torino and La Fenice, in Frankfurt, Augsburg, Erfurt, Klagenfurt and Hamburg, in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga, Paris and Vienna, and as far afield as Cape Town and Sofia, with Zubin Mehta, Marco Armiliato and Henrik Nánási among his conductors. He also teaches.