Francesca Torelli was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy. After earning a degree in lute with the highest marks at the Conservatory of Verona under the guidance of Orlando Cristoforetti, she completed her studies with Nigel North at the Guildhall School of Music in London. At the same time, she studied renaissance and baroque singing with Auriol Kimber.
From the beginning, her concert activities have featured the repertoires for voice and lute (singing while accompanying herself on the instrument), as well as the solo repertoire for lute and theorbo and basso continuo.
As a soloist, she has participated in numerous festivals in Europe and Australia.
She has provided and played the music for various theatrical productions and has appeared as a lutenist on television programs for RAI 2, Channel 4, and others.
She has collaborated with the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Vivaldi ensemble of the Solisti Veneti, and with various choirs and chamber orchestras.
She has recorded for the labels Dynamic, Stradivarius, Mondo Musica and Nuova Era, with the ensembles Sans souci, Cappella Palatina, Accademia Farnese and the chamber orchestra Offerta Musicale of Venice. She has also recorded for the national Italian radio (RAI Radiotre) and for other radio and television networks throughout Europe.
For over a decade she has performed in concert and on disc (for the label Tactus) as theorbist with the ensemble Cappella Artemisia, participating in numerous European festivals (the Festival Monteverdi of Cremona, in Bern, for the Concerti del Quirinale in Rome, in Bonn, at the Segni Barocchi in Foligno, for the festival Frauen in der Musik in Herne, in Lugano, and elsewhere).
She has also made two solo recordings (on Tactus) with music by two important 17th-century Italian lute composers: Alessandro Piccinini and Pietro Paolo Melli.
In 2007 A tutor for the Theorbo, an handbook written by Francesca Torelli went out for Ut Orpheus editions www.utorpheus.com This is the first practical method dedicate to this instrument.
Francesca Torelli has edited publications of music for theorbo (for SPES), and written articles on certain Italian composers for lute for various musical periodicals.
She is the founder and director of the ensemble Scintille di musica with whom she has recorded a CD for the Futuro antico series on EMI : Mantova, la musica alla corte dei Gonzaga, featuring the voice of Angelo Branduardi. Since 2007 three more cd went out of the same series, with Francesca Torelli director-lutenist: these recordings are about Sixteenth and Seventeenth century Italian music and obtained great public consense.
She has taught lute at the conservatories of Bari and Vicenza and has held seminars and master classes at numerous Universities and musical institutions. She is currently professor of lute at the “GiuseppeVerdi” Conservatory in Milan
(www.consmilano.it)
