Luisa Castellani is nowadays considered as one of the best interpreters of contemporary music and is particularly appreciated for the extreme flexibility of her voice. She combines passionate temperament, irony and lively wit to the rigour and taste of the musical depth, whether in traditional repertoire as Bach, Mozart and Debussy or in contemporary repertoire; many composers such as Berio, De Pablo, Donatoni, Ferneyhough, Kurtag , Ligeti, Morricone, Pennisi, Sciarrino and Scelsi, have chosen her as their favourite interpreter; Giorgio Gaslini, wrote and dedicated a Liederbook to her.
She was chosen by Luciano Berio for his new edition of Calmo that she performed in many theatres and festivals with Sequenza III and Folksongs, and he created for her the role of Ada in Outis, performed at La Scala di Milano and then at the Chatelet in Paris in the Autumn of 1996. She interpreted roles in the operas Esequie della Luna and Tristan by F. Pennisi, Anton by E. Scogna, The turn of the screw by B. Britten, and Outis and La vera storia by L. Berio, La madre invita a comer and La senorita Cristina by L. De Pablo, Il Velo Dissolto by F. Donatoni.
The Teatro alla Scala, La Fenice, the Teatro Real Madrid, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, the Barbican Centre in London, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Berlin Philarmonie, the Opera Bastille and the Châtelet of Paris, the Carnegie Hall in New York, where she was invited by Maurizio Pollini, are among the places where she sang operatic roles and chamber music, under the baton of many important conductors such as Berio, Boulez, Bernasconi, Eotvos, Ferro, Gelmetti, Panni, Pons, Robertson, Rodan, Rophe, Sinopoli, Tate, Thielemann, Webb with orchestras such as RAI, Filarmonica della Scala, London Sinfonietta, Radio France, Israel Symphony Orchestra. Invited by Wien Modern, Holland Festival, Salzburg Festival, Biennials of Helsinki, Venice and Berlin, Settembre Musica of Torino and Automne Musical of Parigi, she repeatedly sang the Marteau sans Maître of Boulez with the Ensemble InterContemporain of Paris and the Ensemble Modern of Frankfurt,and collaborated with the Ensemble Recherche Freiburg, ASKO Ensemble of Amsterdam, the Arditti Quartet, the group “Contrechamps” of Geneva and with soloists like Antonio Ballista, Bruno Canino, Massimiliano Damerini, Andras Keller, Giorgio Gaslini and Andrea Lucchesini.
Recently she came back to opera on stage singing the role of Mrs. Jessel in the production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw conducted by Jonathan Webb in Cremona, Como, Brescia in 2007 and Pavia and Ravenna in 2008.
She is a professor of voice at the Scuola Superiore di Musica in Lugano. She gives regularly courses, lectures and masterclasses in Italy, USA and South America, China, Switzerland, Hungary. She recorded worldwide for radio and television. She recorded several CDs for Fonit Cetra, Harmonia Mundi, Hungaroton, RCA, Ricordi, Stradivarius, including the complete Lieder cycles by Mozart and lyrics by A. Savinio, Sequence III by Berio for DGG, and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, under the baton of Sinopoli for Teldec. She received the prize Gino Tani for the opera.
