Salvatore Fisichella

Bellini's tenor roles came to Salvatore Fisichella almost complete, and he sang them where they carry the most weight: Arturo in I puritani at the Metropolitan Opera in November 1986, opposite Joan Sutherland, and Pollione in Norma, with Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor and the serious Rossini beside them. Born in Catania in 1943 — Bellini's own city — he reached the stage by way of the Concorso Adriano Belli, whose prize brought him a debut at Spoleto in Massenet's Werther, and worked outward from there to La Scala, the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome and the houses of Europe. Rossini's Otello and Mosè in Egitto, recorded for Philips, preserve that end of his repertory. The Bellini d'Oro came in 1994, the Gigli d'Oro in 1998 and the Beniamino Gigli prize in 2003, and in 1996 he was made a Knight of the Italian Republic for artistic merit. From 2003 he sang at Solothurn with the Sofia National Opera on its Swiss summer seasons, in casts that included Rumiana Petrova, Emil Ugrinov, Svetozar Rangelov and Yoana Zhelezcheva.