Michele Pertusi was born in Parma and studied voice under Arrigo Pola, Carlo Bergonzi and Rodolfo Celletti. A renowned performer of the Rossinian repertoire, he has appeared regularly at the Pesaro Festival since 1997 and was awarded the Festival’s prestigious “Rossini d’oro” Prize. He also makes regular guest appearances at Milan’s La Scala (Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, the title role in Don Giovanni, the Count in Nina o sia la pazza per amore, Selim in Il turco in Italia, Gottardo in La gazza ladra, Philip II in Don Carlo, and Don Ruy Gomez in Ernani). He sings on the great international stages under the musical direction of Daniel Barenboim, Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Riccardo Muti, Myung-Whun Chung, Sir Colin Davis, Daniele Gatti, Carlo Maria Giulini, Vladimir Jurowski, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Antonio Pappano, and Sir Georg Solti… He recently appeared in Don Carlos at the Lyon Opera, Lucia di Lammermoor (Raimondo) and Semiramis (Assur) at London’s Royal Opera House, Jerusalem (Roger) and the title roles in Macbeth and Attila at the Verdi Festival in Parma, Don Pasquale at the Vienna Staatsoper and La Monnaie in Brussels, Simon Boccanegra (Fiesco) at Bologna’s Teatro Comunale, Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Basilio) at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, I Masnadieri (Massimiliano) at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, Rossini’s Stabat Mater with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Verdi’s Requiem at the Barcelona Auditorium under the direction of Kazushi Ono. In 1995, he received the Abbiati Italian Critics’ Prize and in 2005 he won a Grammy Award for his recording in the title role of Falstaff under the direction of Sir Colin Davis. His other recordings include La Cenerentola and Il turco in Italia (Riccardo Chailly), Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte (Georg Solti), Le Nozze di Figaro (Zubin Mehta), Don Giovanni (Daniel Barenboim), and La Damnation de Faust (Sir Colin Davis).Projects: I Masnadieri at Milan’s La Scala, Don Carlo at the Teatro Real in Madrid and the New National Theatre de Tokyo, Jérusalem in Bilbao, Les Vêpres siciliennes at the Rome Opera, Les Huguenots (Marcel) at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva, La Cenerentola at the Vienna Staatsoper, Maria Stuarda and Medea at the Metropolitan Opera, Simon Boccanegra at the Teatro Regio in Turin, La Forza del destino in Liege, and Pelléas et Mélisande (Arkel) at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.

Michele PertusiBass