Gerlanda Cipolla

After obtaining her master’s degree in French English Italian translation at ISTI in 1990, now the Department of Translation and Interpreting of ULB, and her diploma in didactics in 1994, Gina Cipolla first worked as a freelance translator and as a foreign language teacher in a private school. In 1999, she began teaching in adult education, then from 2001 at the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles as a lecturer in Italian language for singers, and since 2009 also as an assistant at Université Saint Louis Bruxelles. Always fascinated by classical music, particularly Italian opera, but also by oral tradition singing, she pursued vocal training at the Académie d’Uccle, as well as seminars in ethnomusicology and Italian oral tradition singing at Université de Paris VIII and at the Scuola Popolare di Musica di Testaccio in Rome, with the singer, composer, and musicologist Giovanna Marini. She also undertook several research trips to various regions of Italy with Giovanna Marini’s class. She later performed pieces composed by Giovanna Marini for the productions Le Journal d’Eve, a play by Dario Fo and Franca Rame created for the Festival de Spa in 1998, and Théorème, a chamber cantata based on the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini, presented in 2000 at the Espace Senghor under the direction of Christine Leboutte. A member of the group Les Voix des Garennes, she has for many years taken part in concerts and performances, including Coups de Chœurs Uit de Bol at the KVS under the direction of Fabrizio Cassol and Alain Platel, the Dario Fo and Franca Rame Festival at Théâtre Poème, several editions of the Festival Voix sur Meuse in Liège, a concert at the Montmartre arenas for the Festival Muzik et Jardins, BRXL BRAVO at the Ateliers de la Monnaie, Cincali Minatore a vita with Hervé Guerrisi, Beaux Jeunes Monstres, a radio musical creation by Florent Barat and Sébastien Schmitz, Teatri Migranti at Espace Delvaux, and Sur les traces de l’immigration italienne Station Dijon, created and directed by Anna Andreotti and presented in Testaccio Rome and in Paris. Convinced that the accurate interpretation of a song requires, in addition to understanding the text and perfect pronunciation, knowledge of the historical and socio cultural context in which the piece was created, Gina Cipolla integrates this approach as much as possible into her teaching of the Italian language, both for singing students at the Conservatoire and for coaching the vocal group of which she is a member, while respecting the specific qualities and richness of these two musical worlds, different yet not impermeable.