Italian belcanto technique for all styles,Cossu method 
Voice teacher, born 1971 Italian and French, former contralto and mezzosoprano soloist in opera, oratorio, lieder. I was dedicated to an acting career, student with a scholarship at Accademia Internazionale di Teatro in  professional courses 1994/95 while attending popular music lessons with Giovanna Marini, early music, vocal improvisation with Antonella Talamonti at the Scuola popolare di Testaccio – Rome. Entered the A. Casella Conservatory in 1997/98,  the soloist for the end of year concert of the Conservatory Choir and Orchestra. In 1999 began a professional soloist career which led to record the romanza for the credits of the movie Un viaggio chiamato amore by Michele Placido in competition at the 59th Mostra Internazionale in Venice, to be alto soloist in J.S. Bach Magnificat for the “Concerto per la vita e per la pace “of Christmas 2003 broadcast worldwide by Raitv, in the absolute National premiere of La doppia Luna di Shakespeare by Carlo Crivelli, for Anna Cuocolo in the prestigious Festival di Andria, Teatro Marrucino, Festival Frentano, Teatro comunale dell ‘Aquila, Società dei concerti B. Barattelli, Orchestra sinfonica abruzzese, Festival di Anagni, Corso per organista e maestro di cappella_l’Aquila, Auditorium YMCA Jerusalem, Teatro Vascello Roma, Teatro dell’Unione Viterbo and many more.

The career must be suspended in 2004 for an abdominal pathology, aggravated by a fault of surgery the career of singer cannot resume (the surgeon was convicted for malpractice and for having caused the end of the career, the condition becomes chronic forcing me to work and remain completely private for more than ten years, in complete remission since 2019).

I started teaching in 2008, from 2010 my student Giorgia Pantaleone started winning pop singing competitions, she was invited to sing in shows, opened professional concerts, she distinguished herself in a workshop of Cinzia Spata at the CET of Mogol and invited to sing in the Italian Sky Tv concert for Christmas 2013 at 16 years old, I vocally prepare the Gianluca Grossi concert at the Piper in Rome, Eleonora Braconi stands out in international jazz and pop courses (Fara Music, Mary Setrakian), she sings at the French Embassy in Rome with two other of my non-professional students (you can hear her here https://soundcloud.com/lucia-cossu/sets/e-one-of-my-students-16- years-old), I help the transition from non-professionals to professionals like Livia Bigi, I become the technical referee for several professionals like Eleonora Bianchini (she thanks me in the cover of her album Surya), Elena Paparusso, Margherita Rinaldi, Galil3o , Eddie Monroe, Alice Robber, Lorena Falbo, Ramona Vizzaccaro, Laura Sciocchetti, and I give technical consultations to teachers and singers like Elsa Baldini, Chiara Morucci, Stefania Scolastici, the Sandro Pertini hospital sends me patients that medicine and speech therapy  cannot help with complete success (Sister I. can resume singing as an amateur soloist and she had a completely hypotonic vocal cord due to an operation, 7-year-old M. finally speaks, nodules disappear, a teacher improves her dysphonia).

I studied with Giannella Borelli, Anna di Stasio, Giovanna Canetti, Angelo degli Innocenti, Cesare Scarton, Giovanna Marini, Antonella Talamonti and followed seminars and masterclasses with Charles Spencer, David Jones, Cinzia Spata, Franco Fussi, Gretchen Parlato, Ilse Middendorf therapists, Catherine Sadolin. My collaborations have been with Carlo Crivelli, Jonathan Williams, Lorenzo Arruga, Anna Cuocolo, Sergio Rendine, Cesare Scarton, Simone Genuini, Angelo degli Innocenti, Claudio Curti Gialdino, Francesco Sorrentino, Vittorio Antonellini, Luciano Bellini, Giorgio Carnini, Anna Cuocolo, Diego Conti, Angelo Manzotti, Sergio la Stella, Toni Candeloro, Federica Carnevale. My repertoire was of a certain variety: opera, chamber music and oratorio, lieder. The technique was good enough to have a good high tessitura which allowed me to sing pieces outside the contralto repertoire like the pieces by Carlo Crivelli and Luciano Bellini, written for a soprano range. One of my characteristics was the obsessive work on sound, the search for the meaning of fraseggio and music in the work on the sound itself and its harmonics and nuances.

Cossu method and the development of my view on Belcanto were during the chronic illnesses. Probably part of the discoveries for my method would have not been possible without that extreme level of general inflammation, for some years also chronic and neuropathic pain. With a doctor we made the hypothesis that I could feel and realise what parts were involved and the connections I found by this extreme and pathologic sensitivity. So it was really unlucky but fortunately not only unlucky. I developed the precise exercises I call now Cossu method as a further step of principles of Italian belcanto technique I was trained in. It seems a reasonable hypothesis that those exercises work on the muscular chains strictly related to what is a healthy and well coordinated voice production, viewed the kind and charachteristics of results in applying it (so at the end I was instead probably profoundly lucky, even if harsh).  It is now something as a corpus of 50 exercises, some completely created new, some modified from yoga or dance or theatre training and a certain number of vocalises that get more precise every year. What is beyond expectancies was to discovery that when you connect properly those muscular chains the voice will seem to have  functioned naturally since always, the sound of the chords changes immediately and go on developing for the successive year; to be sure of what I was really doing I made a precise program under medical control on some cases with no issues or damaged vocal chords with nodules, hypomotilities, an organic damage, disphoniaes, deficiencies in adduction not solved with medical treatements. I worked in blind, not having access to the medical certifications till after the end of the program, the results were to confirm the suspect of having really found something new and useful.

The improvements in sound, extension, not straining of the voice anymore and career, also without medical certifications are in the same line of those certified, and are constant.  Since I worked with pop, jazz, rock and contemporary voices I started adapting vocalises from Garcia or Panofka or Marchesi or my teacher Giannella Borelli in accents and vowels and muscular balance to have them useful for not classical sounds and also the results in young singers and professionals were what you can see in my upper pages. It happened to work often with teen and preteen and it is a kind of work I am fondly passionate about, being complementary to the work with professionals. On one side you have to work and adapt to a style yet structured (or some personal adaptations sometimes melted to bad habits or mnot found functions) and find the part not yet expressed that will give a flavour or more flavour of them in the present or a tool to evolve creatively and deepen artistically, on the other it gives the possibility of having more time to really develop well an instrument discovering how the world is evolving and the musical potential of a human being and an interpreter of the future and adapting my tools to become their sounds being the future sounds.

Lucia Cossu Voice teacher online/in person
Rue Charles Morren 9 – 4000 Liège BELGIUM
TVA: BE0723776188
Mail: cossuvoiceteacher@gmail.com