Stefano Cifolelli

Belgium has been Stefano Cifolelli's professional base for more than a decade. He sang there between 2012 and 2023 in Rossini's Otello, Roméo et Juliette, Lucrezia Borgia, Ullmann's Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor and Glass's Satyagraha, and in 2023 took Nadir in Les Pêcheurs de perles for Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. He is the Chancellor in the 2006 video of Rossini's Bianca e Falliero, and sang in the symphonic Viva Italia programme at BOZAR in Brussels in 2019. A single summer at the Solothurn Classics festival in 2012 gave him five operas at once — Il trovatore, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Nabucco, Otello and La traviata. He was born in Antwerp into an Italian family and studied at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels with Marcel Vanaud and Pascale Devreese, afterwards long under the guidance of Vittorio Terranova; during his studies he belonged to the opera studio of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, and took master classes with Graham Johnson, Tom Krause, Luciano Pavarotti, Vera Rózsa and Sarah Walker. Alberto Zedda's invitation to the Accademia Rossiniana in Pesaro in 2011 opened four seasons of Rossini at that festival and at Wildbad, left on record in Adelaide di Borgogna, La gazza ladra and La donna del lago. Since 2013 he has sung regularly at the Komische Oper Berlin, where his parts have included Ferrando, Don Ottavio and Paris. He has taken Rodolfo at Wichita Grand Opera, and Tonio and Faust at the State Opera Rousse.