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The American soprano, opera director and music teacher, Catherine Malfitano, was born in New York City, the daughter of a ballet dancer mother, Maria Maslova, and a violinist father, Joseph Malfitano. She attended the High School of Music and Art and studied at the Frank Corsaro Studio and Manhattan School of Music, graduating in 1971. She often mentions that she was rejected from The Juilliard School.
Catherine Malfitano made her professional singing debut in 1972 at the Central City Opera playing the role of Nannetta in Verdi's Falstaff. She soon appeared with Minnesota Opera, where she sang in the world premiere of Conrad Susa's Transformations and, in 1974 at New York City Opera, in La bohème, as Mimi. She then appeared with the Lyric Opera of Chicago (1975) and at the Royal Opera House (1976) and in other major European opera houses 1974 Susanna in a new production of W.A. Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at The Holland Festival, 1976 Servilia in a new production of W.A. Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito at The Salzburg Festibal. In 1978, Malfitano achieved wider recognition in a telecast of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Saint of Bleecker Street from NYCO, playing Annina., as well as Rose in Kurt Weill's Street Scene on Live from Lincoln Center in 1979.
Since then, Catherine Malfitano has sung at the major opera houses throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, Grand Théâtre de Genève in Geneva, Teatro Comunale in Florence, Gran Teatre del Liceu, in Barcelona, Berlin's State Opera and Deutsche Opera, Wiener Staatsoper in Vienna, Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Paris Opéra, Hamburgische Staatsoper in Hamburg, as well as the Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Houston Grand Opera and the Salzburg Festival.
One of Catherine Malfitano's best-known roles is the title role in the opera Tosca, for which she won an Emmy Award in 1992, performing opposite Plácido Domingo as Mario Cavaradossi and Ruggero Raimondi as Scarpia. The opera was broadcast live from the actual Roman settings of the opera and viewed by more than one billion viewers worldwide. She is also associated with the title role in Richard Strauss's Salome, notably for performing the "Dance of the Seven Veils" ending the dance completely nude, a rarity in opera. She was also Jenny in Kurt Weill's Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny).
Catherine Malfitano's stage repertoire of more than seventy roles spans the entirety of operatic history. Her interpretations extend from Monteverdi’s Poppea and Erisbe in Cavalli’s L’Ormindo to Annina in Menotti’s Saint of Bleecker Street; from Gluck’s Euridice to Polly Peachum in Weill’s Three Penny Opera; from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor to Engelbert Humperdinck’s Gretel; from Marzelline and Leonore in L.v. Beethoven's Fidelio to Francis Poulenc's Thérèse in Les Mamelles de Tirésias; from Konstanze in W.A. Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro and both Zerlina and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni to Cleopatra in Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra; from Fiorilla in Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia to Emilia Marty in Janacek’s Makropulos Case; from the three heroines in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann to the three heroines in Puccini’s Il Trittico; from Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata and Lady Macbeth to Rose and Anna Maurrant in Weill’s Street Scene; from the title roles in Massenet’s Manon and Thais to Puccini’s Tosca, Cio-Cio-San, Mimì, Liù and Minnie.
A champion of 20th century music and the music of American composers, Catherine Malfitano has sung in the world premieres of Carlisle Floyd’s Bilby’s Doll, Conrad Susa’s Transformations, Thomas Pasatieri’s Washington Square and The Seagull and William Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge, McTeague, A Wedding, and Medusa. She has also sung Alban Berg's Lulu and Marie in Wozzeck, Schreker’s Der Ferne Klang, Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Francis Poulenc's La Voix Humaine and Weill’s Mahagonny and Seven Deadly Sins.
Throughout her career, Catherine Malfitano has worked with the world’s leading conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Bruno Bartoletti, Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, James Conlon, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Colin Davis, Christoph von Dohnányi, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Neeme Järvi, James Levine, Sir Charles Mackerras, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Michel Plasson, Carlo Rizzi, Donald Runnicles, Dennis Russell Davies, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Giuseppe Sinopoli, and Simone Young. Her collaborations with directors Robert Altman, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Luc Bondy, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Patrice Chéreau, Elijah Moshinsky, Sir Peter Hall, Peter Zadek, David Pountney, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, Graham Vick, Götz Friedrich, David and Christopher Alden, John Dexter, Giancarlo del Monaco, Jürgen Flimm, Stein Winge and others have produced many of the most memorable operatic events of our time.
In the summer of 2005 Catherine Malfitano added another facet to her artistic profile with her debut as a stage director. Her critically acclaimed new production of Madama Butterfly was the highlight of the Central City Opera festival season, and marked her return to the theater where she had made her professional singing debut in 1972. The Financial Times praised her production as “thoughtfully conceived, fluently executed, and heavy with ritual,” while Opera News added “Malfitano fashioned aButterfly rich in memorable imagery…she worked successfully with the central couple to delineate credible romance; their sensitive enactment of the love duet fueled genuine erotic heat.” ColoradoDrama.com lauded her innovation, citing her production as “one of the most significant and powerful in memory. Malfitano’s dramatic and bold staging bodes well for her second career as a director.”
Since then, Catherine Malfitano has created productions for La Monnaie, Florida Grand Opera, Washington National Opera, San Francisco Opera's Merola programme, English National Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Canadian Opera Company. She has directed new productions of La Voix Humaine by Francis Poulenc (in which she also performed the role of Elle) for La Monnaie in Brussels, Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Saint of Bleecker Street, again for Central City Opera, Tosca for Florida Grand Opera, Rigoletto for Washington National Opera, W.A. Mozart's Don Giovanni for San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, and Lucia di Lammermoor for Central City Opera. In 2010, she made her UK directing debut in London, with a new production of Tosca for English National Opera. Directing engagements in the current season include in a new production ofLucia for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, a revival oTosca for English National Opera, and a new double-bill production of Zemlinsky’s Eine florentinische Tragödie and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi.
Since 1998, Catherine Malfitano has been teaching privately, giving master classes worldwide as well as her own special course entitled "Revealing the ActorSinger Within." In the fall of 2008, she joined the Voice Faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, along with Cynthia Hoffmann, Edith Bers, Marlena Malas, and others. Among her pupils and/or singers who have attended her master-classes: Michael Anderson (Tenor), Anne-Marie Dicce (Soprano), John Fulton (Baritone), Katharina Persicke (Soprano), Mitchell Widmer (Baritone). |
