DANIELA COSTA has achieved widespread acclaim for her natural and insightful performances as an accomplished Lieder accompanist, chamber musician, lecturer, musicologist, Italian Diction coach and professor of Italian opera at several prestigious American Universities.
As an Art-Song accompanist Daniela Costa has performed for the most important musical institutions in Italy (Accademia Filarmonica Romana, Amici della Musica di Perugia, Amici della Musica di Firenze, among others) and internationally in various European countries, including Germany, Belgium, France, Norway, Switzerland, and Malta. She has performed with distinguished singers such as the American soprano and Kammersängerin Nancy Gustafson, the Norwegian soprano Elizabeth Norberg- Schulz, Julian Prégardien, Maria Costanza Nocentini, Debora Beronesi, Franziska Gottwald, and Leonardo de Lisi, among others. Daniela Costa combines an “excellent technique and outstanding musicianship” and the ability to collaborate at the highest level with artists of widely varying temperaments and approaches. She has been featured on international radio stations: in Italy (Rai and Radio Vaticana), Belgium (BRT and RBTF), and Germany (SDR). She recorded two world premiere CDs for Nuova Era Label that were much acclaimed by both national and international press.
Since its first edition in 2009 until Summer 2014, she was regularly invited by Lorin Maazel at his Castleton Festival in Virginia. She worked there as Coach of Italian Diction for the Italian Opera productions and as Professor of Italian Art-Songs for CATS (Castleton Artist Training program). At Castleton Festival she also collaborated with some of the most famous American singers such as Neil Shicoff, Carol Vaness, Nancy Gustafson, Denyce Graves. She also worked as Italian diction coach for Italian Opera productions with Directors Tomer Zvulum (Atlanta Opera), William Kerley, and Lynne Hockney (Glyndebourne Festival).
She is currently Professor of Italian Opera at the Florence Centers of California State University, Gonzaga University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Burch Honors, and she has taught, lectured and performed at Richmond University, Smith College, Georgetown University, Kent State University, Syracuse University, Sarah Lawrence College, Middlebury College, the Smithsonian Institute (Washington D.C.), Northwestern University (Illinois), The School of Music of Fiesole, The Conservatorio Cherubini in Firenze, and the University of Siena.
She also regularly lectures and gives master classes and workshop throughout Italy, Europe, and North America. She was invited to give a series of Master Classes on “Italian diction, vocalism, and style from Baroque to Belcanto and beyond ” at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois and on “Opera, Lied, and Rhythmic translation” at the University of Siena, Italy – Department of Language and Literature.
Recently she gave a lecture on Lyric diction and phonetic (…) for the Round Table on “Language, not language; what type of didactic method should one use today?”, organized by Georgetown University, the prestigious Accademia della Crusca, and Stanford University, at Georgetown University, Villa le Balze, Fiesole. She has written many articles on Vocal Chamber Music (Lieder and Chansons) and translations of Lieder poems from German, French, English, and Spanish for the Amici della Musica di Firenze, the Amici della Musica di Perugia, and Unione Musicale di Torino.
Daniela Costa was born in Rome and studied piano with Sergio Cafaro at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, composition with Gino Marinuzzi, and musicology with Fedele d’Amico at the Institute of Music History at the University of Rome. Thanks to a EU grant, she completed an Advanced Post-graduate Degree in Chamber Music at the School of Music of Fiesole under the guide of Dario De Rosa and the famous Trio di Trieste. Then she was invited by Irwin Gage to attend his three years Advanced Post- graduate Art-Song Accompanist class at the Musikhochschule in Zürich, where she specialized in German Lieder and French Chansons. She was also awarded two study bursaries from the Helvetic Confederation.
