The bass Carlo Colombara studied with Paride Venturi in his native Bologna. He first caught the public's attention in 1986 when he was designated as the best Italian singer at the renowned G.B. Viotti Competition in Vercelli. The following year, he won the "Concorso As.Li.Co." in Milan and debuted at some of Italy's most prestigious opera houses in quick succession. He portrayed Silva in Verdi's "Ernani" at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera, Seneca in Monteverdi's "L'incoronazione di Poppea" at Bologna's Teatro Comunale, and Creon in Stravinsky's "Oedipus Rex" at Venice's Teatro La Fenice. Soon called upon to make international guest appearances in cities such as Tokyo, London, Berlin and at the Vienna State Opera, he rapidly carved a reputation for himself as one of the leading opera singers of his generation. He made his acclaimed debut at Milan's La Scala in 1989 as Procida in "I Vespri Siciliani" under the direction of Riccardo Muti. This was followed by further successful roles at Italy's leading opera house, including Archibaldo in Montemezzi's "L'amore dei tre Re" in 1995, Zaccaria in "Nabucco" in 1996 and, again under Muti, Banco in "Macbeth" for the opening of the 1997 opera season.
Carlo Colombara has since been a regular guest at the leading houses in Italy and abroad. These include, in addition to the above-mentioned theaters, the Bavarian State Opera Munich, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Arena di Verona, Zurich Opera House, the Teatro Colon Buenos Aires, the Metropolitan Opera, Bolshoi and many others. He worked with the most renowned conductors, such as Bruno Bartoletti, Gary Bertini, Myung-Whun Chung, Sir Colin Davis, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Carlo Maria Giulini, Eliahu Inbal, Vladimir Jurowski, Gustav Kuhn, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Daniel Oren, Antonio Pappano, Michel Plasson, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Giuseppe Sinopoli and Sir Georg Solti.
Thanks to the dark timbre and colorful diversity of his voice, as well as to his extraordinary vocal culture, Carlo Colombara has become one of the most sought-after basses of our time. Critics in Italy and abroad have repeatedly underscored his stylistic versatility and interpretive suppleness, thanks to which Colombara can project the powerful authority of Verdi's rulers and father figures just as compellingly as he can breathe life into the filigree cantilenas of Italian bel canto parts. Colombara's stage and concert repertoire is accordingly vast. Between Monteverdi and Puccini's "Turandot", he has interpreted practically all the major bass parts of the Italian repertoire: the kindly Sir Giorgio in Bellini's "I puritani", the manipulative Don Basilio in Rossini's "Il barbiere di Siviglia", the penniless philosopher Colline in "La Bohème", as well as the central Verdi roles such as Filippo II, Fiesco, Padre Guardiano and Giovanni da Procida.
Next to his guest performances at La Scala, recent highlights of Colombara's career have included acclaimed performances in "Don Carlo" in Zurich, Seville and Bologna; "Simon Boccanegra" in Paris, Zurich and Munich; "Aida" at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Metropolitan Opera; "Ernani" in Madrid, Zurich and the Vienna State Opera; "Macbeth" in Naples and Munich; Bellini's "Norma" at the Chicago Lyric Opera; "Il barbiere di Siviglia" at the New National Theatre in Tokyo; and "La Bohème" at the Arena di Verona and in Tel Aviv, under the direction of Franco Zeffirelli. In 1997 he sang the role of Timur in a spectacular open-air production of "Turandot" under Zubin Mehta in the Forbidden City of Beijing. The performance was broadcast around the world and is documented on CD, video and DVD. Parallel to his career as an opera singer, Carlo Colombara frequently appears as a concert singer as well, and recently guested in Verdi's "Messa da Requiem" in Florence, Rome, London and Naples.
Colombara has not only made CD recordings of many of his opera and concert roles, but also taken part in a number of television broadcasts and video productions from Milan's La Scala and the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. He won several renowned prizes such as the Premio Lauri Volpi in 1994, the Premio Orazio Tosi in 1995, the Premio Cappelli in 1999 and the Matassa d'Oro in 2002.
