Marco Rizzello, born in Rimini in 1997, is an Italian pianist and opera coach.

One of the most sought-after opera professionals of his generation, Mr. Rizzello has been based in Germany since 2024. He is currently in his second season as part of the full-time music staff at the Staatsoper in Stuttgart, where he holds the positions of Solorepetitor and Italian diction coach.

His current season at the opera house includes engagements as a fortepiano and recitative player for Don Giovanni, and as a répétiteur, orchestral pianist, and backstage conductor for the productions of Sancta, Otello, Rigoletto, Cenerentola, La Sonnambula, Der Rote Wal, Station Paradiso, Carmen, and Turandot.

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A passionate recitalist, this season he will also make his debut in the United Kingdom — performing a recital at the North Norfolk Music Festival with tenor Jonah Hoskins — and he will be the pianist for the show Häßlich as fuck with mezzo-soprano Itzeli del Rosario at JOiN – Junge Oper im Nord in Stuttgart.

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Marco Rizzello’s career has led him to multiple engagements throughout Europe and the United States, where he lived from 2021 to 2024.

Throughout the 2024/2025 season, in Stuttgart, he has been a répétiteur for the productions of Sancta, Idomeneo, Игрок, Parsifal, Otello, Zaide, and Rigoletto; he performed as an orchestral pianist and organist in four concerts with the Staatsorchester Stuttgart (the last one including Mahler’s Eighth Symphony) and played the fortepiano for Barrie Kosky’s celebrated production of Die Zauberflöte.

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During the 2023/2024 season, Rizzello was a Butler Studio Artist at the Houston Grand Opera and, as of today, he is the only Italian artist in the history of the program. There, he served as a répétiteur for three different productions (Jake Heggie’s Intelligence, Madama Butterfly, Don Giovanni) and appeared in recital and other performances both in Houston (Cullen Theater of the Wortham Theater Center, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Paul Cathedral) and in Austin (Bates Recital Hall at the University of Texas at Austin).
 

In June 2024, he was the Italian diction coach for La Traviata and Don Giovanni at the Santa Fe Opera, and in August he was engaged as a staff pianist by the Ravinia Festival, where he shared the stage with the singers of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute in four different recitals at the Bennett Gordon Hall.

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Marco Rizzello is a graduate of many prestigious residency programs. In Summer 2023, he was an Opera Coaching Fellow for the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, where he served as a répétiteur and assistant chorus master for Don Giovanni, appeared in many performances with the Young Artists, and shared the stage with esteemed pianist Steven Blier for the show Night and Day USA.
 

Earlier in the same year, he had been a Young Artist in residence at the Georg Solti Accademia, performing at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice. Past highlights include a performance for classical music station WQXR in New York and an Opera Coaching Fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival 2022, where he was a rehearsal pianist for Falstaff. In addition, Rizzello has served on the coaching staff at the Manhattan School of Music and NYU Steinhardt.
 

Prior to moving to the United States, Rizzello was a prizewinner in a large number of piano competitions and performed in many venues throughout Italy, France, Austria, the Netherlands, and Denmark.

 

Rizzello is a pianist with an extensive repertory that ranges from Bach to Ligeti and includes more than 20 active operatic titles. He has collaborated with conductors such as Harry Bickett, Nicholas Carter, Valerio Galli, Dame Jane Glover, Cornelius Meister, Stefano Montanari, Marc Piollet, Corrado Rovaris, Marit Strindlund, Patrick Summers, and Andriy Yurkevich.
 

His passion for vocal repertoire led him to study many languages and, as of today, Marco is a polyglot. In addition to being a native Italian speaker, he is fluent in English, German, and French. He also speaks elementary Russian and studies the Japanese language.

 

A strong believer in the benefits of early exposure to classical repertoire, Marco Rizzello has been active in educational projects targeting young audiences in the city of Cesena, where he began his musical journey at the age of six. In 2021, he started a collaboration with Gaia Zappi’s “Adagio Assai” project in Cesena, holding a yearly course for young pianists that has come to its fourth season. In September 2025, they initiated the “School of Public” project with a performance of Francis Poulenc’s The Tale of Babar, the Little Elephant, which involved a large number of participants and listeners ranging from 3 to 12 years of age.

 

Marco Rizzello graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Piano from the Conservatorio “Bruno Maderna” in Cesena and later obtained Master’s Degrees in Solo and Collaborative Piano from the Conservatorio “Gioachino Rossini” in Pesaro. He also studied at the International Piano Academy in Imola and at the Manhattan School of Music (PPD 2023). He studied solo repertoire with Giorgio Farina, Marlies Van Gent, Boris Petrushansky, and Giovanni Valentini, and collaborative repertoire with Ubaldo Fabbri, Warren Jones, and Thomas Lausmann.