Bonaventura Bottone

Bonaventura Bottone (born 19 September 1950 in London) is an operatic tenor who has performed at many of the world's leading opera houses. He trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London. The Academy awarded him a Fellowship in 1998. He is described by the New Grove Dictionary of Opera as "a superb actor with a strong, lyrical voice" who "excels in comic roles".

Bonaventura Bottone made his professional debut as Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville with Welsh National Opera in 1973. He subsequently sang Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor in Belfast, a Servant in Richard Strauss's Capriccio with Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Bardolfo in Verdi's Falstaff for Glyndebourne Touring Opera in 1976. He appeared at the Wexford Festival for three consecutive seasons (1977–1979) in Smetana's The Two Widows, Luigi and Federico Ricci's Crispino e la comare and Montemezzi's L'amore dei tre re.

Bonaventura Bottone has enjoyed a long and creatively rich partnership with English National Opera. He has created more than twenty roles with the company in divers repertoire. His roles with the company include: Puccini's Rodolfo (La bohème), Luigi (Il tabarro), Pinkerton (Madama Butterfly); Verdi's Duke of Mantua (Rigoletto); Weill's Sam Kaplan (Street Scene); Gilbert and Sullivan's Nanki-Poo (The Mikado); Offenbach's Mercury (Orphée aux enfers) and Menelaus (La Belle Helene); Berlioz' Faust (La Damnation de Faust) and Tchaikovsky's Lensky (Eugene Onegin).