Monica Guillén-Chavez

San Gimignano and the towns around it were the stops on the Italian tour Monica Guillén-Chavez sang in the summer of 2003 with the I.C.O. Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, beside the tenor Maurizio Graziani, the mezzo Claudia Marchi, the baritone Mauro Augustini and the Bulgarian singers Vyara Zhelezova, Daniela Ivanova and Georgi Dinev. Born in Mexico City, she entered the National Conservatory of Music there at nine, first as a pianist and then as a singer, studying with Irma Gonzalez, Enrique Jaso and Erika Kubacsek and graduating with distinction in 1991. At the Vienna Hochschule fuer Musik und darstellende Kunst she studied voice with Margarita Lilova, taking her diploma in 1996 and a Magistra artium in 2001, and lied and oratorio with Kurt Equiluz, Robert Holl and Charles Spencer. Between 1997 and 2003 she was a finalist and prizewinner at the Maria Callas competition in Athens, the Belvedere in Vienna and the Riccardo Zandonai at Riva del Garda, and took an honorary prize and medal at the Hariclea Darclee competition in Braila in 1999. She sang the title role of Offenbach's Die Grossherzogin von Gerolstein at the Wiener Kammeroper in 1997 and Fiorilla in Il turco in Italia there in 1998.