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Born in Italy, Valentina Valente
began very young to study violin and voice, receiving the degree from the
Conservatory of Music “N. Paganini” of Genova.
She has been a singing pupil of Professor Elio
Battaglia in Turin and at the Academy
“Hugo Wolf” in Acquasparta (Italy).
Arts graduate with a BA in Modern Foreign
Languages and Literatures (German/Arabic) at the University of Turin.
In 1991 she won the Mozart Prize at the 10th
Belvedere International Singing
Competition in Vienna and in 1992 the First Prize in the J. Gayarre International Singing Competition in Pamplona, Spain
(President of the Jury: José Carreras).
In
1993 Valentina
gave her stage debut in a
Berlin Philharmoniker production of Mussorgski’s Boris Godunov with
Claudio Abbado (CD for Sony Classical) in Berlin
and in Salzburg’s Festival and Tokyo.
Versatile artist, she sings operatic roles
from the Baroque and the Italian belcanto to the modern and contemporary
repertoire: she sings in operas by Monteverdi, Haendel, Stradella, Gluck,
Mozart, Paisiello, Cimarosa, Bellini, Rossini, Donizetti, Offenbach,
Puccini, Humperdinck, Honegger, Wolf-Ferrari, Petrassi, Zemlinsky,
Weill-Brecht, Berg, Menotti, Nono, Dallapiccola, Reimann, Corghi, Isang
Yun, as well as in prime operas such as, for instance, the first Italian performance of Lear
by Aribert Reimann in Turin, or Rinaldo&C. by Azio Corghi with
the Swingle Singers at the Bellini Theatre in Catania. In 2000 she contributed to the world creation
of Pierre Bartholomée’s Le
rěve de Diotime, a long monodrama for voice and 19 instruments, text
by Henry Bauchau, commissioned by La Monnaie
in Bruxelles for the 300 Anniversary of the Opera House (the recording
pour le label Cypres received
the highly regarded “Prix Choc” award from the French music magazine “Le
Monde de la Musique”
and a “Joker” from the magazine “Crescendo”). The belgian composer has
written for her the role of Antigone in Oedipe sur la route (libretto by Henry Bauchau),
opera in four acts, performed at La Monnaie in Bruxelles with Josè Van
Dam as Oedipe.
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Valentina Valente made her debut in the role of
Lulu (Lulu by Alban Berg) in
1999 at the Opèra Royal de Wallonie in Liège, gaining international
recognition. First Italian singer to perform Berg’s opera in German, she
was again Lulu at the Teatro
Massimo in Palermo
and in the Oper Frankfurt in the English National Opera of London
production.
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She has performed with such famous conductors as Claudio Abbado,
Gürer Aykal, Pierre Bartholomée, Leo Brouwer, Massimo de Bernart, Daniele
Callegari, Paolo Carignani, Patrick Davin, Johannes Debus, Arthur Fagen,
Marino Formenti, Eric Hull, Will Humburg, Peter Maag, Georges-Elie
Octors, Paolo Olmi, Marcello Panni, Friedrich Pleyer, György Györivany
Rath, Donato Renzetti, Stefan Anton Reck, Pascal Rophé, Roberto Solci,
Arturo Tamayo, Jonathan Webb, under the direction of Daniele Abbado,
Jonathan Miller, Mario Martone, Giuliano Montaldo, Richard Jones, Elmar
Ottenthal, Pierpaolo Pacini, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Luca Ronconi, Jèrôme
Savary, Philippe Sireuil, Thomas Schulte-Michels, Andrej Tarkowskij,
Micha van Hoecke, Stefano Vizioli, Herbert Wernicke.
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Together with the composer and pianist Erik
Battaglia, she has performed at some of the most important festivals
around the world, singing German Lieder and French and Russian songs:
they have been invited, among others, by Settembre Musica in Turin
for Liederabende devoted to Brahms and Schumann’s songs, and for a
concert dedicated to Aribert Reimann for
his 70s. They have performed two concerts of Lieder by Richard Strauss
during the “Festival Strauss”
in Perugia
at the presence of Dr. Christian Strauss. They have recently,
successfully performed Suleika e lo
specchio, ovvero l’amore e la caducità, composed on texts from the
“West-östlicher Divan” by Goethe, with classical Lieder and 17 Variations
for String Quartet and voice on a theme by Webern written by Erik
Battaglia (Torino, Unione Musicale). They have recorded Il Canzoniere Italiano and Rispetti op.11 and op.12 by
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (Fonit-Cetra), and in 2008 Goethe-Lieder by Italian Composers (Accademia di Santa
Cecilia).
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She has
recorded for Sony, Bongiovanni, Fonit Cetra, Warner Fonit, Arts, Cyprès,
Stradivarius.
In 2006 she was invited as President of the Jury
at the International Singing Competition “La romanza da salotto” in
Conegliano (Italy).
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Valentina
Valente is founder and editor of the Publishing House Analogon:
Italian book editions of selected works by the English musicologist
Eric Sams (6 volumes already published), the Italian translation of
significant English, American and German texts on the history and
aesthetics of German Lied (among the authors: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,
John C. Tibbetts), and original essays on Lied, Music, Biography,
Literature, Poetry.
Valentina
Valente and Erik Battaglia teach Lied Repertoire for singers and pianists
(duo voice and piano) at the Accademia di Musica di Pinerolo.
For info
(courses 2009/2010): www.accademiadimusica.it
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