Biography

A first-year Butler Studio artist from Mercato Saraceno, Italy, Marco Rizzello serves as coach for a selection of mainstage operas and appears with Butler Studio singers in recital and other performances during HGO’s 2023-24 season. He is an alumnus of the Art Song Festival in Cleveland and the Aspen Music Festival, where he served as a rehearsal pianist for Falstaff under the baton of Patrick Summers. He has served on the staff at NYU Steinhardt and worked as a coach at Manhattan School of Music. A prizewinner in many international piano competitions, Rizzello recently made his New York debut at the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at New York classical music station WQXR. He has performed in many prestigious festivals, including the Settimane Musicali al Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza (2017 and 2020) and the Piano Echoes Festival (2019). Rizzello studied at the “G. Rossini” Conservatory in Pesaro, the International Piano Academy in Imola, and the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. He studied solo piano with Giorgio Farina, Giovanni Valentini, Marlies Van Gent, and Boris Petrushansky, and opera coaching with Ubaldo Fabbri, Warren Jones, and Thomas Lausmann. Engagements this past summer included the 2023 Georg Solti Accademia and Wolf Trap Opera, where he was a coaching fellow and served on the music staff for Don Giovanni.