Giulio Zappa, director of Opera (e)Studio, has announced the 13 singers that make up the 6th year of this academic project included in the Ópera de Tenerife season. Italy and Russia, with three singers each, head the list which also includes singers from Germany, Chile, Spain, China, Costa Rica, Mexico and Australia. They were picked from 113 candidates who went to the auditions held in Bologna, Madrid and Tenerife in May.

The singers chosen are Maria Ostroukhova (Russia), Milos Bulajic (Germany), Matías Moncada Albarrán (Chile), Gianni Giuga (Italy), Francesco Samuele Venuti (Italy), Inés Lorans Millán (Spain), Sophie Burns (Australia), Vittoria Vimercati (Italy), Li Biao (China), Aleksandr Utkin (Russia), William Alonso Hernández (Costa Rica), Esteban Sebastián Baltazar (Mexico) and Anna Kabrera Eliseeva (Russia).

Four performances

These singers will arrive in Tenerife in the first week of September to start the process of comprehensive artistic improvement supervised by Giulio Zappa. Their training will lead to four performances of The Italian in Algiers to take place at the Sala Sinfónica in Auditorio de Tenerife from 25 to 28 October.

The singers will be divided into two casts who will perform twice, except for Australian Sophie Burns, who will be present in all four performances in the role of Zulma.

The Italian in Algiers opens the 2018-2019 season and will bring the debut in Ópera de Tenerife of Maximilian Nägele, current Kappelmeister at Deustche Oper Berlin. This new coproduction of Auditorio de Tenerife with Teatro Comunale di Bologna has Giorgia Guerra as stage manager. It is set in the 1980s in the surreal atmosphere of a spa in Algiers, in addition to colourful costume from that period.