Luigi De Donato was born in Cosenza where he pursued his musical education at the S. Giacomantonio Music Conservatory. Later he studied with Margaret Baker, Gianni Raimondi, Regina Resnik and Bonaldo Giaiotti.
He won several international singing sompetitions and received the Award for the best Bass Voice at the Francesco Paolo Tosti International Competition for Opera Singers.
Multitalented musician and singer, Luigi has an incredibly wide repertoire, spanning from early Baroque to Romanticism.
More recently, he made his role debut as Il Conte in Le Nozze di Figaro under Václav Luks in Brno and Caen, and sang his first Gessler in a new Francesco Lanzillotta/Bruno Ravella production of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell which opened the 2024/2025 season of the Opéra de Lausanne.
One of the foremost interpreters of the repertoire of the 17th and 18th century, Luigi sang Monteverdi’s Orfeo (Caronte) and Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (Il Tempo and Nettuno) conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini and directed by Robert Wilson for la Scala, and returned to the roles for the Teatro Real in Madrid in a William Christie/Pier Luigi Pizzi production. With Jean-Christophe Spinosi, he took the stage as Seneca in L’Incoronazione di Poppea for the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
His Handel roles include Ariodate (Serse) in Madrid, Moscow and Barcelona under the direction of Spinosi; Lucifero in La Resurrezione under Diego Fasolis and Vacáv Luks; Polifemo (Aci, Galatea e Polifemo) with Giovanni Antonini at the Salzburg Festival, at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin alongside Akamus and, under Ruben Jais, at both the Bucharest George Enescu Festival and London Wigmore Hall; Leone (Tamerlano) at the Teatro Real in Madrid with Paul McCreesh and Graham Vick; Argante (Rinaldo) on an Italian tour and Claudio (Agrippina) at La Seine Musicale in Paris both conducted by Ottavio Dantone; The King of Scotland (Ariodante) in a Gianluca Capuano/David Alden production at the Bolshoi Theatre.
In the field of Bel Canto, Luigi De Donato performed the roles of Alidoro in La Cenerentola at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and Opéra de Lausanne conducted by Stefano Ranzani and staged by Adriano Sinivia; Podestà in La Gazza ladra at the Frankfurt Staatsoper; Mustafa in L’Italiana in Algeri at the Versailles Royal Opera and Beaune Festival where he also embodied Basilio in Il Barbiere di Siviglia under the baton of Jérémie Rhorer.
Other career highlights include Le Grand Inquisiteur in Don Carlos at the Hamburg Staatsoper, Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte at the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse and Polyphème in Lully’s Acis et Galatée alongside Federico Maria Sardelli for the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
Luigi headlined Vivaldi’s Olimpiade (Alcandro, Clistene) with Alessandro De Marchi for the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik and, alongside Jean-Christophe Spinosi, for both the Opéra de Nice and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.
Recently, he has reunited with Václav Luks for the launch of his first solo album “Polifemo, the Baroque Monster” they are currently presenting on a European tour. For Naïve and with the complicity of Fabio Biondi, he has released Vivaldi’s long-lost opera Argippo.
In the 2025/2026 season, Luigi gives his role debut as Méphistophélès under Laurent Campellone in a new production of Faust for the Opéra Royal de Versailles and Opéra de Tours, returns to the role of Sarasto in Die Zauberflöte in a Giuseppe Grazioli/Cédric Klapisch production at the Opéra de Saint-Etienne and reprises Lully’s Atys (le Fleuve Sangar) under Leonardo García Alarcón in Versailles.
Luigi will team up with Stéphane Fuget for Handel’s Agrippina (Claudio) for the Beaune Festival, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (Aeneas) for the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Peri’s Euridice (Plutone/Radamanto) in Versailles and Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (Plutone, Caronte) for the Opéra de Dijon. With Václav Luks, he will perform Stradella’s San Giovanni Battista (Erode) in Prague and Dresden, and will offer the recital “Polifemo, the Baroque Monster” for the Smetanova Litomyšl Festival.
