On Sunday 21 August 2011 Christopher Busietta, a young Maltese Australian tenor, gave a great concert at a jam-packed St Paul’s Anglican Chruch in Canterbury, a suburb in the east of Melbourne. He was accompanied on the piano by Amir Farid. The impressive concert program included arias and songs by Mozart, Beethoven, Léhar, Sutherland, Rofe, Donizetti, Schubert, Barber, Britten, Massenet, Tchaikovsky and Verdi in English, German, Italian, French and Russian.
Profiles
Christopher Busietta completed his Bachelor of Music at the Melba Conservatorium of Music in 2006 in Melbourne, Australia, studying voice with tenor Peter Mander. Whilst at the Melba, he was the recipient of the Robert Salzer scholarship and Jean Robinson prize.
Upon completing high school, he made his start performing many principal roles in amateur theatre companies around Melbourne. He made his professional singing debut in 2004 singing the tenor arias in J.S. Bach’s St John’s Passion with the Scots Church choir and orchestra to critical acclaim and from that point was often performing around Melbourne as a tenor soloist in concert and in oratorio.
In his final year of his music degree, he made his operatic debut in the role of Pedrillo for lyric Opera of Melbourne’s 2006 production of Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio. Following that, he spent two years performing children’s opera at primary schools in Victoria with Opera Australia’s Schools Touring Company as Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville and The Prince & Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella, as well as performing in the extra chorus for several productions with Opera Australia and the Victorian Opera Company.
In 2008, he won the 2009 More than Opera German-Australian Operatic Grant and has since based his professional career in Germany, performing with Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Staatstheater Aachen and currently Stadttheater Augsburg.
His growing list of professional operatic and theatrical roles include Don Ramiro in La Cenerentolo, Erwin in Erwin and Elmire, Dr Cajus in Falstaff, Goro in Madama Butterfly, Gherardo in Gianni Schicchi and Arturo/Normanna in Lucia di Lommermoor. He will be performing eight roles with Stadttheater Augsburg next season including Alfred in Die Fledermous and Der Steuermann in Der Fliegende Hollander.
Christopher Busietta is the son of Joseph Busietta, a Chartered Accountant, who had migrated to Melbourne in the fifties. Christopher’s grandfather, Carmelo “Memé” Busietta, was Malta’s leading waterpolo player of the 1920s and an Olympian who, with a view to having Malta participating in the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, contributed to the formation of Malta’s Amateurs Athletic Association, its affiliation to the internatinal federation governing swimming (FINA) and the establishment of the Malta Olympic Committee. Memé’s brother, Victor Busietta was also an Olympian who represented Malta in the same sport.
Amir Farid is a Melbourne based solo pianist, associate artist and chamber musician, winner of the prestigious 2006 Australian National Piano Award. He has been described as “a highly creative musician, a pianist of great intelligence and integrity. He brings strong musical substance to all that he does, imbuing it with his own particular experience and understanding”.
Throughout his career, Amir has been working and developing under the guidance of Professor Ronald Farren-Price, with whom he completed his Bachelor of Music (Hon) degree, and is currently undertaking a Master of Music degree at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne. He also attended the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) where he studied with Rita Reichman, Geoffrey Tozer and Timothy Young. In 2009, he graduated with distinction as a Scholar supported by the Gordon Calway Stone Memorial Award at the Royal College of Music London, studying with Andrew Ball.
He has performed concerti with the Sydney Symphony, Melbourne Symphony, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, Melbourne Youth and ANAM Orchestras, including Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl with the Melbourne Symphony in front of a capacity 13,000 strong crowd. He is a member of an award winning piano trio, The Benaud Trio, and as an associate artist, he has accompanied some of Australia’s finest singers and instrumentalists.
