Cristian Lanza

A tenor from Rome who has made his career in German-speaking Europe, Cristian Lanza spent the turn of 2012–13 touring with the Plovdiv Philharmonic, several dates billed as Die Nacht der 5 Tenöre, through Aschaffenburg, Singen, Mönchengladbach, Alsdorf, Schwabach, Gießen and Mainz, including the Herkulessaal der Residenz in Munich on 2 January 2013. Those programmes mixed Puccini, Verdi, Leoncavallo and Sorozábal with Neapolitan song, and that has remained his ground: Verdi galas and tenor nights in halls including the Munich and Berlin Philharmonie, the Beethovenhalle in Bonn, the Frankfurt opera house and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, with tours to Switzerland, Austria and China. Ismaele in Nabucco is among his stage roles, and he has sung at the Roncole Verdi festival near Busseto, broadcast on Italian television. His Verdi galas have often been shared with the soprano Silvia Rampazzo and the baritone Giulio Boschetti, in company with the Milano Festival Opera. He played melodies by ear at the piano at four, sang in a church choir as a boy and founded his first band as a teenager, having settled on the tenor's path in early childhood; he names Mario Lanza as a continuing source of inspiration. The Roncole Verdi evening was that festival's first, given before Verdi's birthplace with the Roncole Verdi Orchestra under Silvano Frontalini in cooperation with the Casa Verdi in Milan. Among the halls that have engaged him are the Alte Oper Erfurt, the Kaiser-Friedrich-Halle in Mönchengladbach, the Meistersingerhalle in Nürnberg, the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, the Tonhalle St. Gallen, the Festspielhaus Bregenz and the Grand Theatre in Qingdao.