Valentina Valente

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).

In 1991 she won the Mozart Prize at the 10th Belvedere International Singing Competition in Wien and in 1992 the First Prize at the J. Gayarre International Singing Competition for Opera and Lied 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.

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.

She has performed at some of the most important theatres around the world as the Berliner Philharmonie, Salzburg Großes Festspielhaus, Staatsoper in Wien, Bunka Kaikan and NHK Hall in Tokyo, La Monnaie in Bruxelles, ORW in Liège, Oper Frankfurt, Teatro Monumental and Television RTV Madrid, Television France2 Paris, La Scala di Milano, San Carlo di Napoli, Opera di Roma, Teatro Regio, Lingotto and Auditorium Rai in Torino, Petruzzelli in Bari, Massimo in Palermo, Bellini in Catania, La Fenice of Venice, etc.

Valentina Valente - Almirena
Cordelia, Lear - Valentina Valente

Versatile artist, thanks to her excellent command of languages, to her musicianship and sense of theater, her repertoire ranges from Baroque and the Italian belcanto to the modern and contemporary: 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, Schoenberg, Berg, Menotti, Nono, Dallapiccola, Reimann, Corghi, Isang Yun, Ambrosini, as well as in prime operas such as, for instance, the first Italian performance of Lear by Aribert Reimann in Turin; Rinaldo&C. by Azio Corghi with the Swingle Singers at the Bellini Theatre in Catania; 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 (2000; 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. She sings with the Mdi contemporary ensemble (invited by Ivan Fedele for the Rassegna Koine she sings works by Marco Momi (Les Mots, Stradivarius), and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire staged by Sylvano Bussotti; the three acts opera Il killer di parole by Claudio Ambrosini and Daniel Pennac (2010 at La Fenice in Venice and 2012 at the Opera of Nancy), winner of the Premio Abbiati 2010; Akhnaten by Philip Glass in Torino’s Lingotto and Milano’s Piccolo Teatro Strehler for MITO 2015.

She has performed with 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, Andrea Molino, 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, Mario Martone, Francesco Micheli, Jonathan Miller, Giuliano Montaldo, Richard Jones, Elmar Ottenthal, Pier Paolo Pacini, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Luca Ronconi, Jèrôme Savary, Philippe Sireuil, Thomas Schulte-Michels, Andrej Tarkowskij, Micha van Hoecke, Stefano Vizioli, Herbert Wernicke.

In 2006 she was invited as President of the Jury at the International Singing Competition “La romanza da salotto” in Conegliano (Italy).

She’s regularly invited for concerts in most renowned venues such Festival di Brescia e Bergamo, l’Unione Musicale and MITO of Torino, Sagra Musicale Umbra and Festival Strauss of Perugia (esecuzione integrale dei Lieder di Richard Strauss), Pomeriggi Musicali e La Scala di Milano, Teatro San Carlo di Napoli, Teatro Filarmonico di Verona, Philharmonie di Berlino, Bozar di Bruxelles, RTV di Madrid, Mezquita di Cordoba. In 2006, at the Festival Settembre Musica of Torino, she gives a recital dedicated to the berliner composer Aribert Reimann for his 70s. 

In 2007 Valentina Valente launched the Publishing House Analogon. In 2013 she edits the first Italian translation of Meine Gesangskunst by Lilli Lehmann (Il Canto: Arte e Tecnica, Analogon, 2013) and in 2018 she translated the novel Villa Amalia by Pascal Quignard.

She gives masterclass and voice lessons in Spain (Guadalajara) and in Italy (Accademia di Musica di Pinerolo, Summer courses in Bardonecchia, Summer courses in Neive).

She has recorded for Sony, Bongiovanni, Fonit Cetra, Warner Fonit, Arts, Cyprès, Stradivarius, Evidence.

Premi

1991
Mozart Prize at the 10th Belvedere International Singing Competition in Wien
1992
First Prize at the J. Gayarre International Singing Competition for Opera and Lied in Pamplona, Spain (President of the Jury: José Carreras).
2007
“Prix Choc” award from the French music magazine “Le Monde de la Musique” and a “Joker” from the magazine “Crescendo” for the recording of “Le rêve de Diotime », monodrama for voice and 19 instruments by Pierre Bartholomée on text by Henry Bauchau