Gualtiero Negrini

Gualtiero Negrini, born January 24, 1961, at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in California, is an American singer of Irish-Italian heritage. His father, Luciano Negrini, was a former Catholic priest and bass opera singer from Milan, Italy, and his mother, Clare Mary Negrini, née Young, was an Irish-American mezzo-soprano from Chicago. A notable ancestor, the tenor Carlo Negrini, created the role of Gabriele Adorno for Giuseppe Verdi at the world premiere of Simon Boccanegra in Venice in 1857. Despite occasionally claiming Milan as his birthplace as a tribute to his father, Negrini considers himself a proud Angeleno. He received his early education at St. Casimir's Elementary School and Daniel Murphy High School in Los Angeles, and later trained at the USC Opera Workshop.

Negrini's musical education began at a young age as a pianist and conductor, studying under Fritz Zweig, a former conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and Dr. George Dawson of California State University, Long Beach. He conducted his first performances at age 13, leading a two-piano production of Madama Butterfly with a local amateur opera company. During his teenage years he went on to conduct full-orchestra productions of Don Pasquale, Faust, and Lucia di Lammermoor. At 16, he was offered a position as a repertoire coach at the USC Opera Workshop, where he began what would become an internationally recognized career as a vocal coach. He has maintained private teaching studios in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City, and has coached Metropolitan Opera singers including Jerry Hadley, Thomas Hampson, and Suzanna Guzman, as well as tenor Raul Hernandez, actress and jazz singer Bettina Devin of the film Rent, Franc D'Ambrosio of The Godfather Part III, television and stage performer Nancy Dussault, Broadway singers Lisa Vroman, Aneka Noni Rose, Rachel Eskenazi-Gold, and Karen Morrow, and the Tony Award-winning Dame Edna.

As a singer, Negrini made his debut at age 15 in the role of Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale, performed with L'Opera Comique of Los Angeles, a company founded by his father. Two years later he made his tenor debut as Paolino in USC Opera's production of Il Matrimonio Segreto. At 19, he became a finalist in the 1980 Lyric Opera of Chicago auditions, where he was mentored by pianist-conductor Walter Baracchi, who had been associated with Lyric Opera of Chicago for a decade and previously with Milan's La Scala since the late 1950s. In Chicago, Negrini shared the stage with Luciano Pavarotti, Mirella Freni, Alfredo Kraus, and Jon Vickers, among others. In 1982, at the age of 21, he replaced Gösta Winbergh as Ferrando in Così fan tutte at Lyric Opera of Chicago, becoming the youngest tenor ever to sing a leading role there. During this period he also performed the role of David in excerpts of Die Meistersinger with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf. Among his notable stage portrayals were Nanki-Poo in Peter Sellars's updated production of The Mikado and Don Ramiro in the Gian-Carlo Menotti production of La Cenerentola at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., a role he would eventually perform more than 100 times with various opera companies. In 1984, he was a finalist in the San Francisco Opera Auditions and became a member of the Merola Opera Program.

In the late 1980s, while performing roles including Hoffmann in The Tales of Hoffmann, Lord Percy in Anna Bolena, and Dick Johnson in La fanciulla del West, Negrini was approached by director Hal Prince to recreate the role of Ubaldo Piangi in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera for its Los Angeles premiere. That engagement led to more than 3,000 performances of the role across eight years in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. His Broadway credit in The Phantom of the Opera dates to 1989. In 1991, while performing in the Los Angeles production, he appeared in the period comedy film The Marrying Man, starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, performing as Figaro in a scene from Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

In the early 1990s, Negrini co-founded the Opera Orchestra of Los Angeles, conducting critically acclaimed performances of Puccini's Turandot featuring Metropolitan Opera stars Ghena Dimitrova and Giuliano Ciannella. The orchestra also presented Verdi's Attila and a gala concert, An Evening with Jerry Hadley, featuring Metropolitan Opera tenor Jerry Hadley. He subsequently conducted Los Angeles productions of Tosca, La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, and Carmen. In 2000, he conducted and produced the recording Broadway Classic, featuring soprano Lisa Vroman. That same year, he and Vroman performed together in A Gala Vienna New Year's Eve with the San Francisco Symphony under conductor Yves Abel. In 1999, the two had collaborated on Aaron Copland's The Tender Land, with Negrini singing the role of Martin at the Cabrillo Music Festival. In March 2010, he portrayed Tony in Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella with the Silicon Valley Symphony, again opposite Vroman as Rosabella. Also in 2010, he was appointed resident conductor of the Opera Arts Festival in Palm Desert, California, a position he held for six seasons.

In 2011, Negrini performed the role of William Randolph Hearst in the musical W.R. & Daisy and recorded excerpts from the production. His film work includes directing, acting in, and co-writing the thriller Fairlane Road with Anthony Sherritt, which was picked up by Netflix in 2016. His television appearances include a 2009 episode of the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, a 2012 episode of the Fox series Bones, a late 2017 appearance on Conan as Donald Trump, and a featured role in the FX series Baskets alongside Zach Galifianakis and Emmy Award-winning Louie Anderson. Negrini lives just outside Joshua Tree, California, with his wife Lucy, to whom he has been married since 1989. They have three children: Gina, Charles, and Sophia.