ABOUT BOF

“Belcanto Opera Festival in Japan (BOF)” was organized in 2019 with funding from the Japanese government, the Agency for Cultural Affairs. In partnership with The Festival della Valle d’Itria (Martina Franca, Italy), BOF aims to train future Belcanto singers in Japan.
The Festival della Valle d’Itria is a long-established festival that has been held for 47 years. Many celebrated artists such as Alberto Zedda or music director Fabio Luisi have participated in the festival. The festival features rare or new operas, along with baroque, and is important in Europe.
Also, an academy opens during the festival to train excellent young singers who succeeded in the audition. The first performance at BOF 2019 was S. Mercadante’s "Francesca Da Rimini". From the second performance, Ms. Carmen Santoro (music supervisor of The Festival della Valle d’Itria) became the artistic director of BOF. She has led the second performance, A.Scarlatti’s baroque opera ”Il trionfo dell’onore”, and other pieces such as baroque to success.
Every year Ms. Santoro opens her master class for young singers, and demonstrates her training skill.

BOF Artistic Director / Vocal coach CARMEN SANTORO

I am very pleased and honored to announce the opening of the fifth Belcanto Opera Festival in Japan. This Festival has been assuming an increasingly important and innovative role in Japanese opera scene in performing interesting repertoires than ever since its founding. In fact, its baseline for first four Festivals was Italian belcanto style, inherent aspect of Italian opera, which is a foundation for development of opera art in every generation.
Even when suffered from known burden of epidemic prevention, this Festival was pressed forward with emotional vigor, and has gradually expanded on the success in creating faithful friendship with Japanese audience. Therefore, I feel proud that we can celebrate the memorable fifth Festival with repertoires and cast in same level as worldwide prestigious opera houses despite its short history.
And I am also honored to be able to propose the highest quality of sure and excellent musical performance and singing level.
We will perform Rossini’s opera seria “Otello” for the first time, which is very interesting but difficult and requires powerful and honorable performers. This time we are delightful to be able to invite a superstar John Osborn as title role. Among excellent supporting performances, Leonor Bonilla as Desdemona and Michele Angelini as Rodrigo stand out. It is an unperformed work and the world first performance entirely made by our hands as it always has been in the past. Luis Ernesto Doňas sets out stage director, Chiara la Ferlita takes care of stage design, and Elisa Cbello for costume.
On the day between 2 performances of “Otello”, we will provide Baroque Concert, well-received every year, with famous American countertenor Rey Chenez living in Wien for the first appearance to Japanese audience.
As has happened in the past, we will provide Symposium this year again with several guests.
We are honored and pleased to invite Michele Pertusi, great Rossini Bass, who is well acquainted with Rossini’s opera seria and Italian belcanto. The main theme of discussion will be to evaluate and analyze the difference between Rossini’s person and his works.
We will continue the challenge in Academy once again. Japanese young professional musicians will study belcanto repertoires and we will give them an opportunity to perform Opera “Gianni di Parigi” composed by O. Donizetti under the direction of Edoardo Zucchetti with piano obbligato.
Awaiting the milestone event, we look forward to welcoming you at Teatro del Giglio Showa!

About Opera studio (Master classes by Ms. Carmen Santoro)

This Opera studio, which has been taking place since the first Festival, aims to foster singers studying belcanto style. It is a valuable opportunity to attend workshops of world-class conductor, stage director and singers who will come to Japan for the Festival, centering on Master Class of C. Santoro, artistic director of BOF.
Each time, we provided a concert with students who took the course to bring out the benefit of their efforts. On the fourth Festival, Opera “L’occasion fa il ladro” composed by G. Rossini was performed by Master Class students.