VIDEO PODCAST: Slava Ukraini! - recorded on 24 February 2022, the day Europe woke up to the news that Vladimir Putin's Russian forces had invaded Ukraine. A fifty minute video which also features Caitríona O'Leary and Eric Fraad discussing their new film Island of Saints, and pays tribute to Joseph Horovitz, Malcolm Troup and Maria Nockin.
VIDEO PODCAST: New Recordings - Find out about Adrian Williams, Andriy Lehki, African Pianism, Heinrich Schütz and Walter Arlen, and meet Stephen Sutton of Divine Art Recordings, conductor Kenneth Woods, composer Graham Williams and others.
Italian baritone Mario Sereni was born in Perugia on 25 March 1928. After studies at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and the Accademia Chigiana, he began singing professionally in 1953 at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and from 1957 he sang for twenty-seven seasons at New York Metropolitan Opera. He also guested at the Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco opera houses, and at Vienna State Opera, La Scala Milan and Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
He was Germont in two well-known performances of Verdi's La traviata - the 'Lisbon traviata' (1985, with Maria Callas and Alfredo Kraus) and the 'Karajan Traviata' (1964, with Anna Moffo and Renato Cioni at La Scala).
Mario Sereni retired in 1986 and died in Perugia on 24 July 2015, aged eighty-seven.