Patrizia Cigna

Volterra-born and trained at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in Florence, where she graduated with full marks, distinction and a special commendation, Patrizia Cigna won the Rocca delle Macìe, Tito Schipa and William Walton competitions, reached the final of the John McCormack and the semifinal of Operalia. Her debut came in 1993, in Britten's The Little Sweep, and the light lyric repertoire opened from there: Despina, Norina, the Queen of the Night, Ilia, Adina, Lucia, Musetta, Serpina, Amenaide, Gilda, Susanna, Violetta, Rosina, Elvira, Angelica, Zerbinetta. Wexford Festival Opera, the Arena di Verona, La Fenice, the Teatro Regio di Torino and the Teatro Comunale in Florence have engaged her, as have houses in Korea, Brazil, Spain, Switzerland and Lithuania, and she has worked with Daniele Gatti, Ton Koopman, Daniel Oren, Zubin Mehta, Diego Fasolis and Paolo Olmi. A long discography for Bongiovanni, Naxos, Marco Polo, Tactus, Decca and Dynamic is weighted towards the rarer corners of Italian opera. In August 2004 she sang on an Italian summer tour with the I.C.O. Symphony Orchestra, at Todi and San Gimignano.

She is not to be confused with Paola Cigna, likewise a soprano from Volterra trained at the Cherubini Conservatory; the two have recorded together.