Gabriele Ribis

Two seasons at the State Opera Plovdiv, in 2001 and 2002, took the Italian baritone Gabriele Ribis into productions made with the director Arturo Corso and the playwright Dario Fo, alongside Momchil Abadjimarinov, Jost Ideler, Snejana Dramcheva and Petar Danailov. Born in Cividale del Friuli, Ribis studied clarinet at the Jacopo Tomadini Conservatory in Udine, took a degree in literature and philosophy, and worked on his voice with Claudio Desderi, Regina Resnik, Alberto Zedda and Raina Kabaivanska. He first came on the operatic stage as Malatesta in Don Pasquale at Udine in 1995 and won the Adriano Belli competition at Spoleto in 2000, building a repertoire that runs from Mozart and Rossini through Donizetti to Verdi and Puccini, with Don Giovanni, Guglielmo, Figaro, Belcore, Germont and Sharpless among the parts. He founded the Piccolo Opera Festival on the Italian–Slovenian border and became its artistic director.