Michele Pertusi

Michele Pertusi is one of the most respected basses working today. In 2006 the CD recording of Falstaff with the London Symphony Orchestra under Colin Davis, in which he sang the title role, won a Grammy Award for best opera recording, and in 1998 the CD recording of Il turco in Italia under Riccardo Chailly, in which he sang Selim, won a Gramophone Award. Michele Pertusi received the Premio Abbiati in 2015. He has also been awarded the Gold Medal of the Italian Republic for services to culture and, in 2018, the Premio Celletti from the Festival della Valle d’Itria in Martina Franca. He appears at leading opera houses and concert halls and prestigious festivals worldwide and has sung under conductors such as Riccardo Muti, Carlo Maria Giulini, Zubin Mehta, Georg Solti, Daniel Barenboim, James Levine, Kazushi Ono, Myung-Whun Chung and Antonio Pappano.

In recent years Michele Pertusi has shown himself to be an outstanding Verdi interpreter. Among other roles, he has sung Philip II in Don Carlo (Vienna, Madrid, Milan, the Verdi Festival in Parma), Attila (Milan, Venice, Verdi Festival, Liège), Pagano in I Lombardi alla prima crociata (Parma, Monte Carlo), Sparafucile in Rigoletto (Verdi Festival, Vienna), Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra (Vienna, Turin, Parma), Padre Guardiano in La forza del destino (Liège), Count Walter in Luisa Miller (Munich, Rome), Silva in Ernani (Milan), Massimiliano in I masnadieri (Milan, Valencia), Zaccaria in Nabucco (Verdi Festival, Arena di Verona), Banco in Macbeth (Verdi Festival), Procida in Les Vêpres siciliennes (Rome) and Ramfis in Aida (Arena di Verona).

As a celebrated Rossini singer, Michele Pertusi is a regular guest at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, where following his debut as Assur (Semiramide) in 1992 he has appeared in Moïse et Pharaon, Maometto II, Guillaume Tell, Il viaggio a Reims, Le Siège de Corinthe, Torvaldo e Dorliska, La gazza ladra and Il barbiere di Siviglia, and been awarded the Rossini d’Oro.

Michael Pertusi has participated in numerous recordings, among them La Cenerentola under Chailly, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte under Solti, Le nozze di Figaro under Mehta, Semiramide under Alberto Zedda, Maometto II under Gianluigi Gelmetti, Don Giovanni under Barenboim and La Damnation de Faust and Falstaff under Colin Davis.

His recent engagements have included Aida, Il barbiere di Siviglia and Nabucco at the Arena di Verona, I vespri siciliani in Turin, Verdi’s Requiem in Lyon, Don Pasquale in Vienna and Palermo, Lucia di Lammermoor in Milan, Ernani in Venice, Don Carlo in Naples, Medea in New York, Moïse et Pharaon in Aix-en-Provence, Turandot under Antonio Pappano at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and Luisa Miller under Michele Mariotti, also in Rome.

Future projects will include I Lombardi alla prima crociata and Verdi’s Requiem at the Verdi Festival, Don Carlo in Modena, Piacenza and Reggio Emilia, Don Pasquale in Tokyo and Hamburg, Guglielmo Tell in Milan, Verdi’s Requiem under Pappano at the Salzburg Easter Festival, Turandot in Brussels and Venice, Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Rossini Opera Festival and Simon Boccanegra in Naples and Rome.