Praised by Il Sole 24 Ore for “his beautiful voice, one that can be singled out from a crowded stage: penetrating, rich, polished, powerful and fresh,” Luca Salsi was born in San Secondo Parmense. He graduated from Parma’s Conservatory Arrigo Boito under the guidance of soprano Lucetta Bizza and then went on to master his technique with baritone Carlo Meliciani.
Salsi is in demand at main opera houses worldwide: New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House in London, Bayerische Staatsoper, Washington National Opera, Salzburg Festival, Los Angeles Opera, Berlin’s Staatsoper, Liceu de Barcelona, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Teatro San Carlo di Napoli, Amesterdam’s Concertgebouw and Teatro Real in Madrid. He has worked with important conductors such as Riccardo Muti, James Levine, Daniele Gatti, James Conlon, Michele Mariotti, Gustavo Dudamel, Nicola Luisotti, Renato Palumbo, Donato Renzetti and Alberto Zedda, as well as prestigious stage directors such as Robert Carsen, Hugo De Ana, Werner Herzog, Antony Minghella, Franco Zeffirelli, Damiano Michieletto and David McVicar.
In recent years, Salsi opened Teatro alla Scala’s 2017-18 season in Andrea Chénier and 2019-20 in Tosca (on both occasions opposite Anna Netrebko), Parma’s Festival Verdi in Macbeth and Teatro La Fenice’s 2018-19 season (again as Macbeth, in a new staging by Damiano Michieletto and with Myung-Whun Chung conducting). He has also sung in three different productions at the Metropolitan in New York (Il trovatore, Lucia di Lammermoor and Luisa Miller), in Macbeth under Riccardo Muti in Florence and Ravenna, in Ernani at Teatro alla Scala, in La traviata and Tosca at the Opéra de Paris, in Nabucco and Andrea Chénier at the Wiener Staatsoper, in Un ballo in maschera at Teatro San Carlo, in Il trovatore at the Arena di Verona, in Simon Boccanegra at the Salzburg Festival, in Don Carlo at Madrid’s Teatro Real (for the season opening) and made his debut as Iago in Otello with the Berlin Philharmonic.
In March 2019, he starred for the first time as a recitalist at Teatro alla Scala with a program that combined music and great Italian poetry ranging from Respighi to Boccaccio, from Campana to Dante, from Liszt to Petrarch.
