Leone Magiera: a life dedicated to art

The meeting “Leone Magiera: a life for art” will take place on FRIDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2022 at 5.00 pm in the splendid setting of the Kursaal Congress Center.

A cultural afternoon in which we will meet one of the most original and multifaceted personalities of Italian and international musical life of recent decades: conductor, pianist, discoverer of new singing talents, Leone Magiera will tell how, over the years, he has accompanied his musical career of stars like Mirella Freni, Ruggero Raimondi, Luciano Pavarotti, Carmela Remigio.

Free entrance.

 

LEONE MAGIERA: life and career

Leone Magiera has been one of the most original and multifaceted artistic personalities on the Italian and international scene in the last decades.

He was born in Modena and attended a piano school under the guidance of Lino Rastelli, Giorgio Vidusso and Alberto Mozzati. He was an extraordinarily talented child and, at the age of 12, he performed in his first concerts. He graduated with honor and a special mention at the Conservatory in Parma. Later, he got a diploma in voice teaching, choir conduction, composition and choral music at the Giovan Battista Martini Conservatory in Bologna.

Besides that, he has tried several other musical disciplines and in all of them he showed his strong and genuine personality.

He has collaborated with maestros such as Giulini, Abbado, Solti, Kleiber and von Karajan, with whom he had a particularly intense artistic relationship.

His career as a pianist has been particularly varied and prestigious. He played in duos with most of the greatest artists in the international panorama. He has performed in hundreds of recitals with Luciano Pavarotti, Piero Cappuccilli, Renata Scotto, Mirella Freni, Ruggero Raimondi, Raina Kabaivanska, Lucia Valentini Terrani, Katia Ricciarelli, Nicolai Gedda and Shirley Verret at the most famous international venues, just to mention a few: the Musikverein in Vienna, the Grosse Festspilhause in Salzburg,  the Salle Pleyel in Paris, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Teatro La Fenice in Venezia and the Auditorium dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia.

His immense and varied discography includes performances as a conductor and a soloist, and it definitely proves his talent. It is published by the most renown international record companies (Decca, Universal, Emi and DGG)

As a conductor, Magiera has worked with the greatest orchestras including the Berliner Sinphoniker, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bayerisher Rundfunk, the Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and dozens of ensembles from North and South America. He has performed in the most valuable opera and symphonic concerts, which were often audio or video recorded by the most important TV channels all over the world. We could mention the concerts at New York Central Park, London Hyde Park and at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which were broadcast worldwide. Magiera has also conducted dozens of operas from the 19th and 20th-century repertoire, from Verdi to Stravinsky, obtaining incredible success at the Staatsoper Theatres in Berlin and Hamburg, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Liceu in Barcelona, Bilbao Festival, Teatro Filarmonico in Verona and Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa.

Didactic activity of absolute prominence. Magiera taught voice for 35 years at the G.B. Martini Conservatory in Bologna after he had won a national contest at the early age of  25, and then in Glyndebourne and Salzburg. Herbert von Karajan considered him the best trainer for any opera singer owing to his deep knowledge of the Italian, French and Mozart repertoires. For several years von Karajan asked him to teach young performers and well-known artists before they debuted at the Salzburg Festival. Among his countless pupils that have become famous are Luciano Pavarotti, Mirella Freni, Peter Glossop, Ruggero Raimondi and, more recently, Carmela Remigio, Fabio Sartori, Francesca Pedaci and Mariangela Sicilia.

His human and artistic relationship with Luciano Pavarotti, of whom he was the maestro from the very beginning of his career, lasted over fifty years and it got strengthened by the over 1,000 performances with him as a conductor and a pianist.

Magiera was Mirella Freni’s maestro when she started to study voice and for the following 25 years.

Therefore, he has significantly contributed to the development of the so-called ‘scuola modenese’, which is now well-known worldwide.

He has been president of the jury in numerous international competitions. He has given masterclasses attended by young artists from all over the world, also in collaboration with prestigious conservatories (Benedetto Marcello in Venice, G.B. Martini in Bologna and Arrigo Boito in Parma) and musical institutions such as the Scuola dell’Opera del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, besides a European specialization course for the Teatro Comunale Pavarotti- Freni in Modena, a masterclass aiming at the debut at the Teatro Comunale Claudio Abbado in Ferrara.

Magiera has deep knowledge of theatrical organization since he has held managing offices at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan (Artistic Secretary) and at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Program Manager).

For several years, he has been the Artistic Director and Music Advisor of the ‘Settembre Musicale’ association in Modena and of the ‘Club Orpheus’ association in Rome, for which he has organized the concert season in the voice sector.

Leone Magiera has written a lot about music: for Ricordi, he has published the books of the series Metodo e Mito dedicated to Mirella Freni and Ruggero Raimondi. Another book, Pavarotti visto da vicino, published by Ricordi and translated into English (Close up) was highly successful with critics and the audience.

In 2020, he published the book Karajan ritratto inedito di un mito della musica for La Nave di Teseo, which aroused great interest in the audience and most qualified critics.

Magiera is an honorary member of the Storica Accademia Filarmonica Mozartiana and he was awarded several prizes:

 

10 February 1990

RAGNO D’ORO Art Prize

UNICEF

 

21 June 1991

Melwin Jones Fellow

LIONS CLUBS INTERNATIONAL FOUDATION

 

27 December 2000

Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic

President Azelio Ciampi

 

7 December 2019

GALEONE D’ORO Lifetime Achievement Award

Literary award in Pisa

 

12 October 2021

Honorary President of the Teatro Comunale Claudio Abbado in Ferrara

Awarded by the city council

 

10 December 2021

Ambassador for Human Rights for Artistic Achievements

Awarded by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

 

www.leonemagiera.com