Costa Campos

A full, glowing night, of augurious stars, came down upon the blessed and mystical set erected at the ruins of Convento do Carmo, there to witness the premiere of Costa Campos as a lead singer, playing D. Basilio from Il Barbiere di Siviglia, under the direction of Jan Latham König. It was the first peak in the life of this young man graduated in Law, born in Luanda, who quested madly for the Apollonius gesture, the grave sculpture of singing, ever since he emerged from the Escola de Teatro e Cinema do Conservatório Nacional, with Maria Germana Tânger and Águeda Sena, since when he received the teaching of Maria Cristina de Castro, Hugo Casaes, Natália Viana, Elsa Saque and Liliane Bizineche; the conspicuous and detailed perfecting of the art and of the craft with Ivo Vinco, Jeff Lawton, Jonathan Morris and Günther Bauer; and finally the splendid principles of voice and interpretation from the divine Grace Bumbry and that illustrious maestro, Enza Ferrari. There followed the musical-theatrical, multi-disciplinal and various performances: Judas, from O Nazareno (Coliseu de Lisboa), La Diva from Zarzuelas Cabaré e Olé Olé (Municipal de S. Luís), the Marquis of Obigny in the historical production of La Traviata, signed by Pier Luigi Pizzi and directed by Giuliano Carella (Teatro de S. Carlos), the Senator Robert Lyons in Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing (Festival de Música de Macau), Carumba, from Leal Moreira’s A Vingança da Cigana. In splendid artistic fruits did the year 2009 smile upon Costa Campos when, in the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, exemplarily integrated in the principles and in the most original scenic conceptions of such great men of the Theatre as Peter Konwintschy and Michael Hampe, he achieved authentic creations in the roles of Bénoit, from La Bohème (directed by Julia Jones), and of the Praetorian in Handel’s Agripina. An artist of indefatigable capacity for work and constant perfecting, eternally avid for new challenges, it is in the creation of the role Montesinos in the opera D. Quixote et la Duchesse, by Boismortier, that he reaps abundant triumph by exhibiting the excellence of his bass register, for the first time facing the hardships of a basso profondo tessitura. He is presently the mentor of a cultural project entitled Primo Canto, where the artistic wisdom begotten in his contact with the Grand Masters is passed onto others. Hailed as an aesthete both on- and off-stage, Costa Campos bears a debt of infinite gratitude towards his beloved Mother and the unforgettable Grace Bumbry for his excellence throughout. (text by Costa Campos)

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