Bonaventura Bottone


Bonaventura Bottone is an operatic tenor who has performed at many of the world's leading opera houses. He trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London. The Academy awarded him a Fellowship in 1998. He is described by the New Grove Dictionary of Opera as "a superb actor with a strong, lyrical voice" who "excels in comic roles".

Early career

Bonaventura Bottone made his professional debut as Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville with Welsh National Opera in 1973. He subsequently sang Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor in Belfast, a Servant in Richard Strauss's Capriccio with Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Bardolfo in Verdi's Falstaff for Glyndebourne Touring Opera in 1976. He appeared at the Wexford Festival for three consecutive seasons in Smetana's The Two Widows, Luigi and Federico Ricci's Crispino e la comare and Montemezzi's L'amore dei tre re.

English National Opera

Bonaventura Bottone has enjoyed a long and creatively rich partnership with English National Opera. He has created more than twenty roles with the company in diverse repertoire. His roles with the company include: Puccini's Rodolfo, Luigi, Pinkerton ; Verdi's Duke of Mantua ; Weill's Sam Kaplan ; Gilbert and Sullivan's Nanki-Poo ; Offenbach's Mercury and Menelaus ; Berlioz' Faust and Tchaikovsky's Lensky.

Royal Opera House Covent Garden

Bottone's appearances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden include: Der Rosenkavalier ; Die Fledermaus ; Les Huguenots ; Otello ; Il viaggio a Reims ; Capriccio ; Sweeney Todd, L'heure espagnole, La fanciulla del West , Adriana Lecouvreur and Le Nozze di Figaro. He also took part in Dame Joan Sutherland's farewell appearance at Covent Garden.

Career in Britain

Bottone has also sung with: Welsh National Opera, where his roles have included Turridu and Le comte Ory; Opera North, where his roles have included Vana, Pedrillo and Nemorino ; and Scottish Opera, where his roles have included Jack, Narraboth and Loge. For Glyndebourne Festival Opera, he has sung Alfred, the Italian Tenor and Tzar Berendey.

Career in Europe

Bonaventura Bottone's European engagements include: Die Fledermaus at the Opéra National de Paris Bastille; Der Rosenkavalier and Die Fledermaus at the Bayerische Staatsoper München; and The Mikado at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.

Career in North America

Bonaventura Bottone's North American engagements include: Capriccio and Andrea Chénier at the Metropolitan Opera; Capriccio, Die Fledermaus, Das Rheingold and Sweeney Todd at the Lyric Opera of Chicago; and Die Entführung aus dem Serail at Houston Grand Opera. In 2008, he was selected by Plácido Domingo and James Conlon to recreate the role of Licht in the forgotten Viktor Ullmann opera Der zerbrochene Krug .

Roles

Four major roles amongst Bonaventura Bottone's wide repertoire have brought him international recognition and acclaim:
Loge – Bottone first performed the role of the fire god in Wagner's Das Rheingold in Richard Jones' ground-breaking production for Scottish Opera. Writing in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Elizabeth Forbes described his performance as magnificent. Bottone revived the role for the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2004 and 2005, receiving critical acclaim from the Associated Press/The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Sentinel.
Alfred – The amorous tenor from Strauss' 1874 comic opera Die Fledermaus has taken Bottone to houses as diverse as the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden Die Fledermaus, the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Opéra de Paris, Glyndebourne, Santiago de Chile and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. He is renowned for his arch, perfectly timed performance as the ageing roue.
Nanki-Poo – Bottone performed 98 performances as the 'amorous second trombone' and son of the Mikado in the renowned Jonathan Miller production for English National Opera. The production is available both as an audio recording The Mikado, Highlights and as a DVD The Mikado.
Captain/Governor/Vanderdendur/Ragotski – Leonard Bernstein edited his original score of Candide for Scottish Opera, performed at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow in 1988. The four portmanteau roles provide a villainous thread, a continual frustration to Candide's advancement. The roles were re-written specifically for Bottone. He has performed the roles at the Royal Festival Hall, La Scala Milan and the English National Opera to critical acclaim.

Concert performances

Bonaventura Bottone has an extensive concert repertoire, which has taken him to many of the world's leading concert halls. He has sung with numerous prominent international conductors, including: Richard Bonynge, Sir Andrew Davis, Jacques Delacote, Sir Edward Downes, Sir Mark Elder, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Bernard Haitink KBE CH, Richard Hickox, Vladimir Jurowski, James Levine, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Neville Marriner, Carlo Rizzi and Jeffrey Tate.

Vocal range

Bottone's vocal range is from C below middle C to D in Alt.

Current activities

Bottone is unusual amongst modern-day tenors in retaining much of his original repertoire well into his sixth decade. To this has been added a wide range of character repertoire, such as Loge, Benda, Torquemade, Nick, Tzar Berendey, Don Ottavio.
In September 2016, Bottone opened the Sarratt Festival of Music. He is a Patron of Bampton Classical Opera and led the jury for the company's Young Singers' Competition in 2019.

Discography