‘Silvia Colasanti’s thrilling music arrives directly to the audience. And moves us, musicians, in the first place, while we are interpreting it’ Salvatore Accardo
In 2013 she won the European Composer Award (Berlin). In 2017 she was appointed by the President of the Republic Mattarella Ufficiale della Repubblica. In 2021 she received the ‘Franco Buitoni Award’, prize that was established by the BBTrust founder Ilaria Borletti Buitoni. Additionally, she teaches at the Conservatorio ‘S. Cecilia’ of Rome.
She is present with her compositions in the main international musical institutions.
Of fundamental importance for the construction of her poetic, between the “material” taste of sound, strong lyricism, and richness of registers, is the collaboration with soloists and conductors of international caliber, such as Vladimir Jurowski, Yuri Bashmet, Salvatore Accardo, David Geringas, Nathalie Dessay, Roberto Abbado, Massimo Quarta, Maxime Pascal.
Recent engagements included the performance in May 2022 of Oltre l’azzurro drama in music on a text by Maria Grazia Calandrone, commission from the Opera del Duomo for the celebration of the 600th anniversary of the construction of Brunelleschi’s Dome, with the reciting voice of Massimo Popolizio, and in October 2022 the first performance of Esercizi per non dire addio, in the version for 2 violins and string orchestra for Massimo and Alessandro Quarta at the opening of the Stradivari Festival in Cremona.
She was recently Composer in Residence at La Toscanini in Parma and will be composer in residence of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano until 2023 with the premiere in February of Time’s cruel hand, for countertenor and orchestra and the revival in May of Eroidi, three monodramas for actress, female chorus and orchestra, with Maddalena Crippa and the musical direction of Oksana Lyniv.
The ‘Paganini’ contest in Genoa and the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition of Sion commissioned her the obligatory pieces for the year 2023. She signed the music for Euripide’s Medea directed by Federico Tiezzi that will be represented at the Greek Theater of Syracuse for the Inda Foundation.
In 2020 she was involved in the Canto della rinascita, a project of the Società del Quartetto di Milano, in which she presents ‘Novemarzoduemilaventi’, on a text by Mariangela Gualtieri, interpreted by Elio de Capitani and Sentieri Selvaggi, conducted by Carlo Goldmund. With the countertenor Raffaele Pe and La lyra di Orfeo she created Frammenti di Lettere amorose, a project for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs named Vivere all’italiana in musica. With Raffaele Pe and Mariangela Gualtieri, she also was present at the Sferisterio di Macerata in summer 2021 with D’un immortale amor, music and verses on Love, Time and Death.
In October 2017, she presented at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna a new work for cello and strings written for David Geringas. In 2018 she inaugurated the Spoleto Festival with the opera Minotauro, based on a text by Réné De Ceccatty and Giorgio Ferrara, based on the homonymous story by Dürrenmatt, directed by Giorgio Ferrara. This was the first work of a Trilogy on the Myth which continued with the opera Proserpine, based on a drama by Mary Shelley and with Ariadne, Phaedra, Dido, three monodramas for reciting voice, female choir, and orchestra, based on texts by Ovid.
In 2016, she gave her world premiere at the Festival dei Due Mondi of Spoleto with Tre Risvegli, based on a text by Patrizia Cavalli, directed by Mario Martone, protagonist Alba Rohrwacher. In 2017, on the Day of Memory, Le imperdonabili, inspired by the figure of Etty Hillesum, based on a text by Guido Barbieri and directed by Alessio Pizzech, was performed. She returned to Spoleto with Requiem, stringeranno nei pugni una Cometa, a Oratorio for soloists, choir and orchestra, in memory of the victims
of the central Italy earthquake, commissioned by the Festival of Spoleto, on texts by Mariangela Gualtieri, reprised later from the Orchestra La Verdi in in Milan and from the Transart Festival in Bolzano.
She wrote the melologue Orfeo. Flebile queritur lyra for the theatre, performed by Maddalena Crippa, L’angelo del Liponard. Un delirio amoroso performed by Sandro Lombardi, Faust. Tragedia soggettiva in musica, based on a text by F. Pessoa, commissioned and represented at the Accademia Chigiana by Ferdinando Bruni conducted by Francesco Frongia. In 2012, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino commissioned the opera La Metamorfosi, taken from a libretto based on the homonymous story by Franz Kafka and directed by Pier Luigi Pier’Alli., which will subsequently be reprised in 2014.
She owes her development to Maestro Luciano Pelosi at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome and to Fabio Vacchi, Wolfgang Rihm, Pascal Dusapin and Azio Corghi.
In 2020 the CD of String Quartets was released, interpreted by the Nous Quartet for Brilliant Classic. Her first monographic CD is entitled In-Canto (2011), followed by the publication of Requiem (2018), also for Dynamic. Her works are published by Casa Ricordi.
Board of Judges Member in “2 Agosto” International Composing Competition, Edition 2020
President of the Board of Judges in “2 Agosto” International Composing Competition, Edition 2023
President of the Board of Judges in “2 Agosto” International Composing Competition, Edition 2024
