Tenor
Biography
A trumpeter before he was a singer, Paolo Antognetti took his first degree with highest distinction at the Giacomo Puccini Conservatory in La Spezia and played in the orchestras of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Teatro di Como, the Puccini Festival and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, spending two years in the last of them, before returning to study singing at the conservatory of Riva del Garda. The character tenor repertoire has been his territory since — Spoletta, Gastone, Borsa, Pong, the Remendado, Bob Boles in Peter Grimes, Heinrich der Schreiber in Tannhäuser, Abdallo in Nabucco — though he also sings lyric parts such as Nemorino and Don Ottavio. He has been heard at the Arena di Verona, La Fenice, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, the Maggio Musicale and the Verdi Festival in Parma. The trumpet diploma at La Spezia came in 1992, the lower diploma in singing at Riva del Garda in 2006; his voice was formed first by Giovanna Canetti and then by Giuliano Ciannella, William Matteuzzi and Sergio Bologna. He made his debut in 2011 at the Arena di Verona as Benvolio in Romeo et Juliette, returned there in 2012 in the same part and as Pong in Turandot, and in the same year first sang at the Teatro Filarmonico in a Pagliacci staged by Zeffirelli, as well as in Pulcinella under Seehafer. Among his leading roles are Rigoletto, Monteverdi's Orfeo and L'incoronazione di Poppea, Pagliacci, Don Giovanni, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Il barbiere di Siviglia, L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale.