José Sempere

born 9 January 1955 Crevillent

Sempere studied voice at the conservatory of the Liceu in Barcelona as well as in Milano, and took master classes with several well-known singers, one of them Alfredo Kraus, whom he audibly admired much. Then he won several singing competitions and made his debut as late as 1987 at the Teatro Regio in Parma, as Ford in Falstaff by, attention, Antonio Salieri.

Next, he sang in Modena, Reggio Emilia, Ferrara, Rome, Oslo and Las Palmas. In 1991, he was Duca at Covent Garden in London, and Masaniello at the Ravenna Festival. He appeared in Palermo, Bergamo, Iesi, Oviedo, Sevilla, Granada, Santander, Málaga, Madrid, San Sebastián, Palma de Mallorca, Cádiz, Lisbon, Geneva, Bern, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Saint-Étienne, Paris, Bergen (Norway), Frankfurt, Munich, Wiesbaden, Tokyo, Osaka, Belgrade, Budapest, at the Arena di Verona, La Fenice in Venice, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper Berlin or the Gran Teatre del Liceu. His repertory contained a lot of belcanto: Arturo, Edgardo, Ernesto, Fernand, Poliuto, Tonio, Idreno (Semiramide), Orombello (Beatrice di Tenda); and a lot of true rarities: Sancia di Castiglia by Donizetti (Madrid, Teatro de la Zarzuela, 1992), Roland (Esclarmonde by Massenet, Saint-Étienne 1992 and Paris 1994), Inés de Castro by the completely forgotten belcanto composer Giuseppe Persiani (Iesi, 1999) or La fattucchiera by the even less-known Catalan belcanto exponent Vicenç Cuyàs (Liceu, 2001). A truly interesting repertory, although his singing was not quite up to it.

Sempere appeared in public at least until 2007.

Reference 1: Kutsch & Riemens, reference 2
Picture source

I would like to thank Thomas Silverbörg for the recording.