SPONSORED: Ensemble. Unjustly Neglected - In this specially extended feature, Armstrong Gibbs' re-discovered 'Passion according to St Luke' impresses Roderic Dunnett.
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Francesco Petrozzi
Peruvian tenor, teacher and politician Francesco Petrozzi was born on 13 December 1961 in Bellavista, Callao. He studied singing with Manuel Cuadros Barr, then, on a scholarship from the German government, at Musikhochschule Würzburg with Hanno Blaschke, and later with Ana Higueras at the Escuela Superior de Canto in Madrid.
He made a career as a tenor, appearing in concert halls and opera houses on five different continents. In Germany, he sang in Kurt Weill's The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and in the first performance of Edouard Lalo's opera Fiesque. In Argentina he sang Loge in Das Rheingold and Erik in The Flying Dutchman.
He was professor of voice at the University of Western Ontario in Canada (1994-6).
From 2016 he was a congressman and, for a few months in 2019, he was Peru's minister of culture.
Francesco Petrozzi died from cancer in Lima on 27 May 2024, aged sixty-two.