With her “lush, creamy voice” and “giddy coloratura”, Italian-Canadian soprano Lucia Cesaroni is freshly in demand as some of opera’s most coveted heroines, making new signature roles out of Verdi’s Violetta, Puccini’s Mimì, and Mozart’s Donna Anna. Her 2020/21 season was slated to include her debut at North Carolina Opera as Mimì in La bohème (COVID19 – now 2022), Violetta in Saskatoon Opera’s production of La traviata (COVID19), Fiordiligi in Vancouver Opera’s Così fan tutte (COVID19), and Donna Clara in Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg at the Enescu Festival in Romania. With Tapestry Opera, Ms. Cesaroni sang the role of Ava in the cast recording of the award-winning opera by Gareth Williams and Anna Chatterton, Rocking Horse Winner; the album was broadcast in late 2020 on CBC Radio’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera. In the spring of 2021, Ms. Cesaroni was slated to perform Joe Hisaishi’s The East Land Symphony with both the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (COVID19).
In recent seasons, Ms. Cesaroni made acclaimed role debuts, including Violetta and Mimì at Pacific Opera Victoria’s productions of La traviata and La bohème, as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni at the Spoleto Festival under James Conlon, Micaëla in Carmen with Maine’s Bay Chamber Concerts, and Hanna Glawari in Vancouver Opera’s The Merry Widow. “Amazingly enough she even manages somehow to revolve about herself, coquettishly swivelling her svelte form in places where the rest of us aren’t even jointed…and then turn around and invest an old chestnut like
Lehàr’s Vilja ballade with genuine feeling,” says Lincoln Kaye for The Vancouver Observer. A champion of Italian bel canto repertoire, Ms. Cesaroni has joined Boston’s Odyssey Opera in two productions of obscure Donizetti operas, including Mathilde in Elizabetta, regina d’Inghilterra, and Eleonora in L’assedio di Calais. Additional operatic credits include Donna Anna at the Teatro Aligheri di Ravenna and the Teatro Coccia di Novara, Musetta in La bohème with Opéra de Montréal, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro at the Spoleto Festival, Woglinde in Das Rheingold at Pacific Opera Victoria, Norina in Don Pasquale at Saskatoon Opera, Yum-Yum in The Mikado with Toronto Operetta Theatre, and Maria in West Side Story with Vancouver Opera.
As a concert artist, Ms. Cesaroni was a soloist for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection”, with the Sinfonia Nazionale della RAI in Torino, a programme of duets and arias with Andrea Bocelli at the Columbus Citizens Foundation, NYC, Carmina Burana with the Berliner Symphoniker and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Handel’s Messiah with The Victoria Symphony and the Montréal Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Cesaroni is a graduate of the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal. Additionally, she has trained at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute, the Britten-Pears Young Artists Programme at Aldeburgh, the Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg-Augsberg, the Chautauqua Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the International Vocal Arts Institute. She is an alumna of the University of Toronto Opera School (MMus).
