Bio
The baritone Vicente Sampaio is originally from São José dos Campos, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. His contact with music began early on. Influenced and encouraged by his family, he was always musically involved in projects at his local church, whether singing, playing the guitar, or directing Easter and Christmas cantatas.
In 2008, at the age of 16, he joined the Youth Choir of his city, under the direction of Maestro Sergio Wernec, with contralto Lidia Schäffer as his first voice teacher. In the choir, he had his first contact with classical music and opera, which led him to fall in love with this art form.
In 2011, he moved to the city of São Paulo where he began his bachelor's degree in music. He graduated in Music with a focus on lyric singing from the Institute of Arts at Unesp, being a student of Professor Martha Herr's singing class. Also at Unesp, he studied in Maestro Abel Rocha's opera class, where he was part of the "Fábrica de Óperas" project (Unesp Opera Studio) for 4 years, having the opportunity to interpret his first operatic characters, such as "Marcello" in La Bohème, "Gianni Schicchi", "Simone" and "Betto di Signa" in the opera Gianni Schicchi (Puccini), "Papageno" in The Magic Flute (Mozart), "Aeneas" in Dido & Aeneas (Purcell), "Sam" in Trouble in Tahiti (Bernstein), and "Bob" in The Old Maid and the Thief (Menotti). During this same period, he began receiving vocal and repertoire guidance from Professor Isabel Maresca.
In 2015, at the age of 22, he became part of the Paulistano Choir (Coral Paulistano) of the São Paulo Municipal Theater, under the direction of conductors Martinho Lutero Galatti de Oliveira and Naomi Munakata. At the São Paulo Municipal Theater, where he worked for 6 years, he had great and diverse stage experiences, both as a choral singer and soloist, performing, for example, works like The Creation (Haydn), Missa Brevis in F major K192 and Coronation Mass K317 (Mozart), Requiem (Fauré), Requiem (Duruflé), Requiem (Liszt), Petite Messe Solennelle (Rossini), Missa in G minor (Vaughan Williams), besides interpreting the character Fiorello in The Barber of Seville (Rossini) in the opening of the 2019 Season.
In 2020, he moved to the city of Hamburg, Germany, with the purpose of continuing his musical studies - now focusing primarily on opera - and following his desire to expand his artistic experiences. Thus begins his master's degree in opera at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg (University of Music and Theater Hamburg), belonging to Professor Geert Smits' class. In the master's program, he was able to play the title role in the opera The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart), portray "Doktor Falke" in Die Fledermaus (J. Strauss), as well as perform numerous concerts in the university environment and also throughout the city of Hamburg, mainly with sacred and contemporary repertoire.
