“It was wonderful to receive such an amazing and warm welcome from the Australian public”, he says.
For the first time in Australia, Ivan admits he could live in this country and he would love to come back for another season with OA. “La Bohemeencapsulates joy, kindness, fear, love, poetry, art, sadness and suffering. It is a present-day story. It is a complete opera”, Ivan explained in a previous conversation with SBS Italian admitting the he has been fascinated by Graeme Murphy’s production.
Ivan Magrì started his career at a very young age as a stage actor. Most of his ancestors have been famous and successful stage actors, including his mother Marta and his father Carmelo. His grandfather, Giovanni Romeo, was an important poet as well as an actor instilling in him love for the arts, in particular poetry an artform Ivan is pretty good at.
“I have a fairy tale story on how I became a tenor” he says. “The night my mother passed away I went to the window and cried out her name as loud as I could. I believe that as she was leaving this world she gave me my voice as a gift”.
He then studied at Giuseppe Verdi conservatorium in Milan. The turning point in his career came when the great Luciano Pavarotti expressed a desire to coach him. Pavarotti was one of the many teachers Ivan is grateful to. “My first teacher, Domenica Monti Catania, is fundamental in my career. Without her I probably wouldn’t be here” he admits. Other important teachers in Ivan’s path to success were Giovanna Canetti and Wilma Borelli from his conservatorium days, and Fabio Tartari “who gave me a solid technique and expressive interpretation for future roles”.
Ivan Magrì and Joyce El-Khoury in Puccini's La Boheme Source: Photo by Keith Saunders courtesy of Opera Australia
Poet and stage actor Giovanni Romeo Source: Courtesy of Ivan Magrì
Angela Romeo Magrì, Ivan's mother. Source: Courtesy of Ivan Magrì
Undoubtedly his early experience as a stage actor gives him an advantage on many of his current colleagues. 2018 was pretty hectic for Ivan Magrì. He has performed, amongst others, at the Slovak National Theatre of Bratislava as the Duke of Mantuain Verdi’s Rigoletto, at the Petruzelli in Bari as Sir Edgardoin Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, at the prestigious Royal Opera House in London as the Duke of Mantua, again as Sir Edgardo at the Den Norske Opera in Oslo, as Cavaradossiin Puccini’s Tosca in Lima, again the Duke at the famous Wiener Staatsoper, and Rodolfo (the role he is playing in Sydney for OA) at the Houston Grand Opera.
“My wife could not be with me as she is expecting our second child who should be born on the 21 January. I miss my family a lot” he confesses after having spent alone Christmas, New Year’s Eve and also his birthday on January 3.
Placido Domingo and Ivan Magrì on stage. Source: Courtesy of Ivan Magrì
His wife, Marta Marcelli is a talented ballerina who had to put her career on hold to have a family while his young daughter, Emilie, is already showing promising signs of becoming a big star of the future.
Opera Australia' La Boheme runs until 28 March.
Marta and Emilie Magrì Source: Courtesy of Ivan Magrì
