Yoshiko Ottogalli
YOSHIKO OTTOGALLI was born in Japan to a traditional family.
Her father was a teacher and her mother a master of the traditional tea
ceremony and ikebana. Her grandfather, as well as being the head of a
secondary school, was a master of No theatre. Her grandmother's role
was the meticulous care, preservation and handing down of ancient
traditions regarding clothing, behaviour and the running of the
household which had to abide by very clearly determined rules.
During
her time at middle school and her secondary school studies she directed
her school choir from the piano. Her unique voice and musical ability,
delivered with the greatest youthful freshness yet founded on the most
thorough training, enabled her to win numerous competitions. She
graduated in music and singing from Musashino University in Tokyo
before going on to do postgraduate studies at the prestigious Tokyo
National University of Fine Arts and Music. She completed her studies
at the Nikikai Opera Studio specialising in the interpretation and
performance of operatic roles and scenery art.
She is a dramatic
soprano who performs the roles entrusted to her with the greatest
intensity, arousing in her audience such emotions as go beyond the
confines of song rendering their message universal.
Even in her days
as a university student she began to appear in concerts of both lyric
and chamber works as well as recitals of international songs.
Thanks
to her capacity of transmitting such emotional intensity to her
public, she was invited to participate in many important events
throughout Japan.
Having left Japan, she put her musical career on hold so that she might fufill a long-standing wish to start a family of her own. She now lives in the Valtellina with her Italian husband and her two children.
To the great joy and surprise of her public she took up her singing career again in the autumn of 2008 with a voice which is now fuller and more exciting than ever.
She sings the most beautiful arias of Italian opera
by Verdi, Puccini, Bellini, Cilea, Giordano, Catalani, Ponchielli,
Leoncavallo, Donizzetti and Ma scagni...
Arie antiche di G.G. Carissimi, Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Händel, Pergolesi e W.C. Gluck
Chamber works by Tosti,
Respighi, Rossini, Falla, Satie and Strauss.
Her repertoire also
includes the music of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers,
Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Leonard Bernstein, the sacred arias of
Schubert, and Gounod and Caccini.
Not Forgetting the strong bonds she feels with her homeland,
she also performs, works of the twentieth century Japanese
composers TAKI Rentaro, YAMADA Kosaku, NAKADA Yoshinao, ONO Tadasuke
and the most beautiful Japanese songs, both modern and traditional.
