Italian-Canadian soprano Lucia Cesaroni has had an exciting year, debuting both soprano roles in La bohème, as Mimi with Pacific Opera Victoria and as Musetta with L’Opéra de Montréal. Her Mimì “was sinuous and seductive. Cesaroni has a gift for projecting movement beyond the footlights and revealed a voice that is smooth, lush and velvety” (Times Colonist). In between Puccini heroines, she sang Eleonora in Donizetti’s rarely performed L’Assedio di Calais with Boston’s Odyssey Opera.
Cesaroni’s 2016-17 season included Micaëla in La tragedie de Carmen with the Bay Chamber Concert Series in Maine as well as her Italian debut in Le nozze di Figaro at the renowned Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi as Mozart’s heroine Susanna, under the baton of James Conlon. She was immediately invited back and sang Donna Anna in a new production of Don Giovanni (also conducted by Conlon) in 2017.
Ms. Cesaroni has been featured with the Royal Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony, the Aldeburgh Festival, the Victoria Symphony, L’Opéra de Montréal, Opera di Ravenna, Teatro Coccia di Novara, Saskatoon Opera, Vancouver Opera, The Kingston Symphony, Toronto Operetta Theatre and VOICEBOX: Opera in Concert, where she created the role of Isis in the world premiere of ISIS AND OSIRIS by Togni/Singer.
Hailed by the Globe and Mail’s Robert Harris for her “beautiful, powerful voice [ably] capturing a large emotional range with great success”, her roles include Woglinde in Das Rheingold, Liu in Turandot, Violetta in La traviata, Pamina and Erste Dame in Die Zauberflöte, Maria in West Side Story, Adina in L’Elisir d’amore, Mimi in La bohème, Gilda in Rigoletto, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette, Norina in Don Pasquale, Anne Trulove in The Rake’s Progress, Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare, and Yum-Yum in The Mikado. As a concert artist, she has been heard in Carmina Burana, Messiahas well as in recital with Rachel Andrist and Allyson McHardy in their programme celebrating 19th Century bel canto divas, You’re Welcome, Rossini.
Born in Toronto and holding a Masters Degree in Opera from the University of Toronto, she is an Alumna of the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival, the Britten-Pears Festival and the International Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv. Upcoming credits include the title role in Vancouver Opera’s The Merry Widow and Violetta in La traviata with Pacific Opera Victoria.