Samuel Mariño has a prodigious voice and 140 thousand followers on Instagram: a lot for an opera singer. The Venezuelan sings as a soprano with a full voice and often appears on stage dressed as a prima donna. «I’m fluid, but it’s not surprising for a millennial like I am», he says today in an interview with Republic. It will be at the Violin Museum in Cremona for the Monteverdi Festival: «In Cremona I mostly performed super difficult arias from the repertoire of Farinelli, the most famous castrato of the eighteenth century, but also baroque arias written for female singers. In fact, my voice allows me to be credible in one as well as in the other. And, to tell the truth, I prefer the feminine ones. To the point that I dare to go as far as the fragile feminine figures of romanticism.”
A prodigious voice
In a video he can be seen singing Bellini’s La sonnambula: «I identify so much with the girls of melodramas because I aim for expressiveness, to express everything I feel, and every inflection of my soul I try to translate, through the voice, into flower petals. Therefore, even in the baroque repertoire, I love the female, emotional, profound parts more than those conceived for castrati, who at the time embodied the heroic, proud, savior macho.” He plays female roles, but he says he doesn’t read the critics: «When I’m on stage it’s the audience’s reaction that interests me. Because I make living art, not museum things. And in any case I know well that you can’t please everyone.” He feels like the champion of transgender melodrama: «Opera exhibits extreme emotions, sadness, love, joy, common to every individual, regardless of the sex of those who sing them and those who listen to them».
Prince and Michael Jackson
While her sparkling outfits «are used to put on a show. Opera is not just singing, it must be seen, and today it must strike even more those who follow it in videos and via social media. For my stage clothes I am inspired by the 80s looks of Prince and Michael Jackson, two legends for me.” Even though things weren’t easy when I was young: «A drama. Everyone bullied me. Male and female peers, even high school teachers. And if the adults laughed at me, I also received beatings from the kids. Even today, at thirty years old, it makes me feel bad to think back to then, to the mental and physical violence that occurred for years, every day.” While the doctors told him «that for some reason the moulting had not fully occurred. They suggested an operation that would perhaps put everything back together. One advised me to dedicate myself to opera.”
