Television Chef Silvia Colloca Takes On Gluck Orfeo Role

Coming Up Roses: Silvia Colloca shows her many
 facets, including opera. (Photo: Robert Gray)

"Is she a television chef? A food blogger? An actor? A singer? With Silvia Colloca, it's not clear exactly what category to put her in, but the Milan-born Sydney mother of two and wife of Richard Roxburgh is happy with the confusion. 'I don't want to be pigeonholed. I think that's a good role model for my kids to show them you can do what you want so long as you are passionate and professional about it,' Colloca said, as she prepared to launch her next incarnation: opera singer as part of the inaugural Spectrum Now arts festival, of which Roxburgh is the creative director. Though Colloca has won a legion of fans across Australia since the launch of her hit cooking series Made In Italy on SBS last year, next Saturday night she will reprise her career as an operatic mezzo-soprano. She takes on the role of Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, based on the myth of Orpheus descending to the underworld to claim his wife. In this case, however, it is Colloca claiming 'her' wife. 'I've done this role before - it really isn't terribly gender-specific so it still works with a woman playing Orfeo,' she enthused. 'And you know, it's Mardi Gras - the timing is great.''....Colloca has been singing as long as she has been cooking and acting. She studied classical singing for five years in Milan before spending several years working as a professional singer throughout Europe. But it was through acting that she met Roxburgh, when they appeared together in the Hollywood horror flick Van Helsing, playing a couple of vampires." [Source] Watch Silvia Colloca perform the aria "Che faro senza Euridice" after the jump.