Giulia Semenzato, Lucile Richardot, Ensemble Resonanz & Riccardo Minasi
Biography Giulia Semenzato, Lucile Richardot, Ensemble Resonanz & Riccardo Minasi
Giulia Semenzato
A winner of the International Competition Toti dal Monte in Treviso and the ‘Premio Farinelli’ at the Concorso Lirico Cittá di Bologna, Italian soprano Giulia Semenzato studied at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice and specialised in Baroque music at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, after completing a Bachelors degree in International Law at the University of Udine.
Giulia has continued to champion music from the Baroque era and is an established recording artist. For Arcana, she has recorded Logroscino’s Stabat Mater, and for Accent, Handel’s Messiah under Václav Luks with the Collegium 1704 & Collegium Vocale 1704. Giulia’s debut recording was Cavalli’s Sospiri d’amore under Claudio Cavina for Glossa.
The 2019/20 season saw Giulia perform Cavalli’s Ercole Amante under Raphaël Pichon at the Opéra Comique, Paris, Pamina Die Zauberflöte at the Royal Opera House Muscat conducted by Diego Fasolis and Cleonilla Ottone in Villa at Teatro la Fenice, Venice. In concert she returned to the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg for a programme of Mozart arias during the annual Mozartwoche under Riccardo Minasi, followed by Pergolesi Stabat Mater with the Musiciens du Louvre.
Lucile Richardot
started singing at 11 in a children’s choir in the East of France, she worked first as a journalist until she was 27.
She graduated in 2008 from the Maîtrise de Notre-Dame de Paris, and then in 2011 from Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Paris in Early Music, having studied under Margreet Hoenig, Noëlle Barker, Paul Esswood, Howard Crook, Jan van Elsacker, Martin Isepp, François Le Roux, Monique Zanetti and Jill Feldman. In 2012, she founded her own ensemble, named Tictactus, with two lutenist friends.
She specialises in early music and contemporary repertoire both on stage and in concerts, performing with Les Solistes XXI (conductor Rachid Safir), Ensemble Correspondances (Sébastien Daucé), Pygmalion (Raphaël Pichon) and Le Poème Harmonique (Vincent Dumestre). In 2012 with Les Arts Florissants she sang the complete Madrigals Books of Monteverdi in performances conducted by Paul Agnew, who later invited her to perform Bach’s St John’s Passion with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 2009, she premiered the role of the first Aunt in the Philippe Boesmans’ opera, Yvonne, Princesse de Bourgogne, held in Paris Opéra Garnier and the Theater an der Wien. At the end of 2014, she was invited by Ensemble Intercomporain to perform Omaggio a Kurtag by Luigi Nono, at the Festival d’Automne in Paris.
More recently she toured Europe and the US with Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras led by John Eliot Gardiner for celebrated performances of Monteverdi’s opera trilogy. She also took the role of Lisea in Vivaldi’s Arsilda performed in the Czech Republic and Europe with Collegium 1704 (Vaclav Luks). Alongside these projects, Lucile also recorded her first solo album with Ensemble Correspondances, Perpetual Night, a collection of 17th century English consort songs.
2018 saw her taking the role of Goffredo in Handel’s Rinaldo with Bertrand Cuiller’s Caravansérail, and her début at Aix-en-Provence Festival as the Sorceress and Spirit in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.
Riccardo Minasi
Chief Conductor of Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, “Artist in Residence” of the Ensemble Resonanz at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and regular guest of the Orchestra La Scintilla at the Opernhaus Zürich, Riccardo Minasi has recently received invitations as guest conductor from orchestras such as Staatskapelle Dresden, Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, Orchestra of the Age of Enlinghtenment, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Orchestre National de Belgique.
In the recent years he conducted Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, Hessischer Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, Academy of Ancient Music, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Zürcher Philarmonia, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, London Chamber Orchestra, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Zürcher Kammerorchester, Basel Kammerorchester, Concerto Köln, Philharmonische Staatsorchester Hamburg, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa, Casa da Música Porto, Stavanger Symfoniorkester, Portland Baroque Orchestra, L’Arpa Festante, Attersee-Akademie Orchestra, Il Complesso Barocco, Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla, Recreation-Grosses Orchester Graz, Potsdam Kammerakademie and Helsinki Baroque Orchestra with whom he was the associate music director from 2008 to 2011.
Most recent operatic engagements include Les Pêcheurs de perles at the Salzburg Festival, Don Giovanni, Entführung, Orlando Paladino, Matrimonio Segreto, Il Pirata, Viaggio a Reims, Turco in Italia and the ballets by Christian Spuck on music by Schnittke, Schumann and Monteverdi at Zürich Opera, Iphigénie en Tauride, Alcina, Nozze di Figaro, Agrippina at the Hamburg Staatsoper, Carmen at the Opera in Lyon, Rinaldo at the Theater an der Wien, Rodelinda, Nozze di Figaro at the Dutch National Opera.
As soloist and concertmaster he performed with Le Concert des Nations of Jordi Savall, Balthasar Neumann Ensemble, Il Giardino Armonico, Al Ayre Español, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di S.Cecilia, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, Accademia Bizantina, Concerto Italiano and invited by Kent Nagano at the Knowlton Belcanto Festival (Canada). He also collaborated with Concerto Vocale, Ensemble 415 and with such artists as Joyce Di Donato, Plácido Domingo, Gianluca Cascioli, Juan Diego Flórez, Bryn Terfel, Veronika Eberle, Jean-Guhien Queyras, Ramón Vargas, Javier Camarena, Antoine Tamestit, Antje Weithaas, Mahan Esfahani, Albrecht Mayer, Reinhard Goebel, Alina Pogostkina, Nils Mönkemeyer, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Cecilia Bartoli, Viktoria Mullova, Jan Lisiecki, Edgar Moreau, Robert Levin, Rafał Blechacz, Gautier Capuçon, Iveta Apkalna, Christophe Coin and Philippe Jarrousky.
In collaboration with Maurizio Biondi he published the critical edition of Norma for Bärenreiter in 2016. Co-founder and director of the ensemble il Pomo d’oro from 2012 to 2015, he was professor at the conservatory Vincenzo Bellini of Palermo between 2004 and 2010. He has held seminars, master classes and historical performance practice lessons at the Juilliard School of Music of New York, Longy School of Music of Cambridge (USA), Sibelius Academy of Helsinki, Hochschule für Musik of Hannover, Antwerp conservatory, Chinese culture university of Taipei (Taiwan), Zürich Opernhaus, Kùks residence (Czech Republic), Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, Sydney conservatory (Australia), at the European Union Baroque Orchestra (EUBO) and as historical advisor for the Montréal Symphony Orchestra (Canada).
Among the numerous prizes received, notably are the albums “Rosenkranz Sonaten” by Biber (finalist at the Midem Classical Award Cannes as album of the year 2009),“Stella di Napoli” with Joyce Di Donato (Diapason d’Or of the year 2015, BBC Music magazine Award, Grammophone Choice, Grammy Award nominee 2015), “Agrippina” with Ann Hallenberg (International Opera Award 2016), “Partenope” with Philippe Jaroussky and Karina Gauvin (Grammophone Magazine – recording of the month), “Catone in Utica”, “Giovincello” and “Haydn concertos” (Echo-Klassik Award 2016), “The Seven Last Words of Christ” by Haydn with Ensemble Resonanz (Diapason d’Or of the year 2018) and the C.P.E.Bach cello concertos with Jean- Guhien Queyras (Diapason d’Or of the year 2019).
