Federico Bardazzi specialises in Early and Baroque Music, he is primarily active as a director in operatic repertoire, from its origins to Händel, Gluck, Mozart, Rossini and Puccini.
Having trained as a cellist with Andrè Navarra in Siena and Paris, he studied chamber music with Piero Farulli and the Quartetto Borodin, composition with Carlo Prosperi e Roberto Becheri, Gregorian chant with Nino Albarosa and Johannes Berchmans Göschl, choral conducting with Roberto Gabbiani and Peter Phillips, orchestral conducting at the Accademia Chigiana with Myung-Whun Chung.

He conducts the Ensemble San Felice, a vocal and instrumental group whose repertoire ranges from Medieval to contemporary music, with whom he has performed to great acclaim across the world.

 

Devoted for many years now to the Bachian repertoire, through the Ensemble he has conducted all of the great Kirchenmusik and all of the instrumental concerts. He has conducted Händel’s Messiah in numerous concerts in Italy and Europe.

 

He usually offers, as well as a new version of Mozart’s unfinished Requiem, rare pages and masterpieces of seventeenth-century music: Girolamo Frescobaldi, Francesco Maria Stiava, Dietrich Buxtehude, Jeronimo de Carrion, François Couperin, Michel-Richard Delalande, John Dowland In 2005 in particular he presented three oratorios by Giacomo Carissimi at the Queen Elisabeth Hall in London and, also in London, in May 2008 he conducted the music for the first staged performance in modern time of Händel’s Rodrigo, directed by Luciano Alberti, at the Lufthansa festival of baroque music. This production was presented in 2009 at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, where in 2011 he directed Claudio Monteverdi’s Il Vespro for the Amici della Musica di Firenze, which was recorded as an audio CD by Brilliant Classic.

His research programmes in Medieval music have met with great success across Europe: Nigra sum sed formosa Cantigas de Santa Maria, La Sibilla del reno Hildegard von Bingen, the litergical drama drawn from Florentine codices Quem queritis, Francesco Landini Laudi e Contrafacta nella Firenze del Trecento, Musica per San Zanobi nella Firenze del Trecento. within this frame he is currently curating La musica della Commedia, an important work on the music of Dante Alighieri’s masterpiece, which takes place through concerts, conferences and multimedia productions.
Federico Bardazzi has been the Director of the Maggio Fiorentino Formazione’s courses from 2008 to 2014. In his role as training coordinator he has realised higher specialized training courses and projects funded by the European Social Fund. All his artistic and technical projects at the lyrical Theatre have been developed in collaboration with some of the main Tuscan musical institutions, such as: Teatro Verdi of Pisa, Festival Pucciniano of Torre del Lago, Teatro Metastasio of Prato, with which he is currently collaborating for other projects. This experience leads to the creation of Opera Network, originally funded together with Carla Zanin, whose objective is to assist in the development of lyrical productions, in collaboration between institutions of different natures, with the aim of encouraging and assisting young artists in the early stages of their careers in developing their professional profile and career path. Some of the most successful projects, all conducted by Federico Bardazzi, have been: Purcell’s Fairy Queen (Teatro Goldoni, Florence 2013), Pergolesi’s Flaminio (Teatro Verdi of Pisa 2014). Two forthcoming productions are: Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il trionfo dell’Onore andGazzaniga’s Don Giovanni (Teatro Verdi, Pisa 2015). Moreover, the season 2016/2017 will see Galuppi’s opera in collaboration with Landestheater of Salzburg, under the direction of Carl Philip von Maldeghem.  

Federico Bardazzi is artistic direct of In-canto gregoriano - Incontri Internazionali di Firenze, a project devoted to the philological study and musical interpretation of the early liturgical repertoire, and member of the senior committee of AISCGre (Associazione Internazionale Studi di Canto Gregoriano). He is also President of the del Florence International Choir Festival, which, every year, brings together hundreds of choristers from all around the world, in a kermesse of high human and musical value.

Being aware of the high potential that the East represents for both the Italian University as well as for the Artistic and Musical Higher Education  system, he is the funder and leading member, within the project Turandot, in collaboration with the Università per Stranieri of Perugia, of a project of cultural, linguistic and musical training for Chinese students.

He has been giving courses on Gregorian chant and Medieval monody at the University of Florence and he has been invited all around the world to lead Masterclasses. 2014 has been a particularly fruitful year, whose highlight have been the World Symposium of Choral Music in Seoul and the Israel Choir Conductor Association in Jerusalem.

Recordings by the Ensemble San Felice – whose concerts have been transmitted by Rai, Swiss, German and Polish radio and the BBC, which has devoted one special on his performances – ranges from the Medieval to the operatic repertoire, and sees him not only in his role of conductor, but also of baroque cellist, gamba and fiddle player, for record labels such as Brilliant, Tactus, and Bongiovanni.

Federico Bardazzi is Professor of Chamber Music and Baroque Music at the State Conservatory Puccini of La Spezia.

 

 

FEDERICO BARDAZZI – recordings

 

Giuseppe Gazzaniga Don Giovanni
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi casa discografica da definire 2016

 

Alessandro Scarlatti Il trionfo dell’onore (Dvd)
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi casa discografica da definire 2016

 

Francesco Landini CANTASI COME laudi e contrafacta nella Firenze del Trecento
Ensemble San Felice direzione Federico Bardazzi Bongiovanni 2016

 

Officium Sancti Miniatis
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi
Viri Galilei direttore Enzo Ventroni Bongiovanni 2016

 

La musica della Commedia
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Classic Voice  - Antiqua 2015

 

Claudio Monteverdi (Mantova 1567 – Venezia 1643)
Vespro della Beata Vergine (1610)
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Brilliant Classics 2015

 

Musica per San Zanobi nella Firenze del Trecento
Festa Sancti Zenobii ad Missam
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Bongiovanni 2013

 

Hildegard von Bingen (Bermersheim 1098 - Bingen 1179)
O orzchis ecclesia - Ad Matutinum in I Nocturno
Symphonia harmoniae caelestium revelationum - Liber divinorum operum
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Brilliant Classics 2011

 

Francesco Maria Stiava (Lucca 1640 -1702)
Vespri di Santa Cecilia
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Clavis 2010

 

Giacomo Carissimi - Oratori sacri
Vanitas vanitatum, Historia di Job, Judicium Salomonis
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Bongiovanni 2008

 

Quem queritis? - prima registrazione assoluta
un dramma liturgico nella Firenze medievale
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Tactus 2004

 

Voria crudel tornare - prima registrazione assoluta
villanelle napoletane del cinquecento
Ensemble San Felice direttore Giangiacomo Pinardi
(partecipazione in qualità di viola da gamba e lira calabrese) Tactus 2003

 

G. Frescobaldi Messa sopra l'aria di Fiorenza - prima registrazione assoluta
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Bongivanni 2000

 

Nigra sum sed formosa - prima registrazione assoluta
il culto di Maria tra monastero e corte
musica medievale galiziana e canto gregoriano
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Bongiovanni 2001

 

Andrea Cavallari Selfportrait - prima registrazione assoluta
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Capstone 1999

 

J.S. Bach Sei Mottetti tedeschi
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Planet Sound 1999

 

J.S. Bach Messa in si min.
Ensemble San Felice direttore Federico Bardazzi Planet Sound 1998