Biography
Born in Madrid, Luis Cansino graduated from Madrid’s conservatory. In 1990, he won the first prize in Francisco Alfonso Competition and debuted in Madrid in Francisco Alonso’s zarzuela La linda tapada. On the opera stage, he debuted at the Opera de Morelia, Mexico in the 1991/92 season as Escamillo (Bizet: Carmen) and Figaro (Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia). Since then, Luis Cansino has performed in theatres in the Iberian Peninsula (Barcelona, La Coruña, Seville, Bilbao) as well as abroad (Lisbon, Mexico City, Istanbul, Bogotá, Manila, Brno). His repertoire, consisting of different genres, ranges from baroque (Handel’s Messiah and Ezio), through Verdi (La traviata, Rigoletto, Macbeth, Un ballo in maschera), Donizetti (L‘elisir d‘amore, Lucia di Lammermoor), Rossini (Il barbiere di Siviglia) and Mozart (Don Giovanni) to contemporary music (T. Muhammad: The March of Victory, Joaquín Rodrigo’s Pavana Real or Federico Álvarez del Toro: El canto de los volcanes). He has also participated in Massenet’s Thaïs (Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona), Bizet’s Carmen (Santander’s Palacio de Festivales), Massenet’s Werther and Gounod’s Faust (Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico). Recently, he created the Duke of Nottingham (Donizetti: Roberto Devereux) in Las Palmas; Scarpia (Puccini: Tosca) in Oviedo and Las Palmas; Don Giovanni in Gijón and Lima; Verdi‘s Falstaff in Jerez; Marcello (Puccini: La bohème) in Lima and Gijón; Wagner (Gounod: Faust) in Bilbao, Mathieu (Giordano: Andrea Chénier) at the Teatro Real in Madrid; Giorgio Germont (Verdi: La traviata) in Bogotá and Bilbao; Dulcamara (Donizetti: L’elisir d‘amore) in Oviedo and Teatro Verdi, Sassari; Rigoletto at Teatro Sociale di Como, Teatro Comunale Pergolesi in Jesi, Teatro dell'Aquila in Fermo and Teatro Villamarta in Jerez; Sharpless (Puccini: Madama Butterfly) at Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville and Guido di Monforte (Verdi: I vespri sicialiani) at the National Theatre Brno. Also in Brno, during the 2013/2014 season, he will sing Verdi‘s Amonasro (Aida) and Nabucco.
Highly appreciated as zarzuela singer, Luis Cansino he has played the leading roles in over 40 titles. At Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela he has performed in Joaquín Gaztambide’s El juramento, Jacinto Guerrero’s La rosa del azafrán and Los gavilanes, and Francisco Alonso’s La parranda; at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia he has sung in Rubert Chapí‘s El rey que rabió etc. His discography inludes, among others, Pavana Real by Joaquín Rodrigo (label EMI Classics).