Stefania Panighini carries out an intense and vital teaching activity, focused on the development of the performing arts of opera singers, for which she is considered a point of reference in the Italian scene.

 

She has taught at the Accademia del Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Teatro Pavarotti-Freni in Modena, the Scuola Paolo Grassi in Milan, and the DAMS (Department of Music and Performing Arts) at the University of Turin, and frequently holds masterclasses in opera direction and stage management. She is currently a full professor of Theory and Techniques of Stage Performance at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Como, where she also supervises the Doctorate in Practice and Repertoire of Modern and Contemporary Music .

 

The last two decades have seen the development of an opera house increasingly attentive to the concept of global spectacle rather than individual performance: the training of young performers has therefore radically changed direction, focusing attention on acting practice, choreographic skills, and stage presence.

My more than ten years of experience teaching performing arts has allowed me to continue research on the STAGE and its centrality in theatrical events, developing a truly post-academic teaching method.

The treatment of the body as a significant poetic phenomenon is still a rare occurrence in opera, and even more so in the academic preparation of young singers: the foundations of this research are based on the intersection of very different disciplines, from actor training to dance theatre, from fencing to martial arts, up to the development of a method that leads the student to full self-awareness.

In short, how do the movements of the soul transform into the movements of the physical?

 

The human being, understood as a matrix of signs, becomes a field of practice for character construction, starting from the physical development of the individual and reconstructing the psychological plane from the body. The study of the mimetic method, which is based on the individual's organic tendency to mirror, through the actions of their own person, the world of phenomena around them, to the point of mastering their manifold variability, allows us to approach the creation of a character, grasping the profound aspects of their being, addressing the emotions linked to it from the body, and not the psyche, an absolutely essential technique for an opera singer, who is not an actor!

 

The study and creation of emotional, non-realistic gestures leads the performer to a profound awareness of their own physical capabilities, to the exploration of different expressive planes, and to the development of personal choreographic creativity that allows the singer to become an active interlocutor in the creative work with the director, in the development of musical and physical dramaturgies together.