The contralto Sonia Prina studied the trumpet and singing at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, and in 1994 won admission to the academy for young singers at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. In 1997 she began to focus on Rossinian rôles requiring a voice in the lower register, and on baroque opera.
Her major operatic rôles have been in Handel’s Orlando, in Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (Salzburg Festival), Amadigi (Teatro San Carlo, Naples), Il barbiere di Siviglia (Teatro alla Scala, Milan), L’italiana in Algeri (Teatro Regio, Turin), Anna Bolena (Teatro Donizetti, Bergamo), Monteverdi’s Orfeo (The Barbican in London and Monteverdi Festival in Cremona) and L’incoronazione di Poppea (Teatro Comunale, Bologna), Vivaldi’s Farnace (Teatro La Zarzuela, Madrid, and Opéra National de Bordeaux), Scarlatti’s La principessa fedele (Teatro Massimo, Palermo) and La Vergine dei dolori (Teatro San Carlo, Naples, and Teatro Liceo, Salamanca).
She has sung sacred and symphonic works and operas in Italy and abroad with conductors such as Alessandrini, Antonini, Bertini, Biondi, Chailly, Chung, Curtis, Karabatchevsky, Kuhn, Koopman, Muti, Rizzi, Savall and Spivakov. Her recordings include Giulio Sabino, Anna Bolena, Orfeo, Farnace, La Senna festeggiante, L’Olimpiade and L’Orlando finto pazzo by Vivaldi.