Roberta Mameli

Soprano Roberta Mameli has been a fixture of operatic stages in Baroque and Classical-period repertory in her native Italy and elsewhere in Europe. A frequent collaborator with Italian early music groups, she has also made numerous festival appearances and has recorded major choral repertory. Her career is notable for the degree to which she has mastered, performed, and recorded previously unknown material. Mameli was born in Rome. She took to singing early and attended the Nicolini Conservatory in Piacenza for vocal studies and the Scuola Civica di Cremona for violin, graduating from both institutions. Mameli rounded off her vocal education with master classes from Enzo Dara, Claudio Desderi, Ugo Benelli, Bernadette Manco di Nissa, and Konrad Richter. She quickly made her debut at the Opera Theatre in Alessandria, Italy, playing Mercury in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. Since then her repertory has been tilted toward, but not exclusively focused on, music from the 16th through the 18th centuries. She has sung opera and choral music with major historical-performance ensembles all over Europe, including the Accademia Bizantina, La Venexiana (with which she has performed all three of Monteverdi's operas), Modo Antiquo, Europa Galante, the Akademie für alte Musik, Cappella Mediterranea, Europea Galante, Le Concert des Nations (under Jordi Savall in Vivaldi's little-known Teuzzone), Cappella Cracoviensis, and Il Complesso Barocco (in Vivaldi's Catone in Utica, under Alan Curtis). The latter performance was recorded and released by France's Naïve label, and Mameli has been heard on a wide variety of vocal recordings including an intriguing re-creation of late 16th century composer Luzzasco Luzzaschi's Concerto delle Dame with La Venexiana. She has frequently been part of the ensemble on that group's recordings and was heard on their 2010 experiment 'Round M: Monteverdi Meets Jazz. In 2018, Mameli sang the soprano part in Francesco Feo's 1734 oratorio San Francesco de Sales with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under Fabio Biondi. ~ James Manheim