Italian tenor Riccardo Massi’s appearance at Wexford Festival Opera marks his operatic début. After secondary school he left the Marche region, where he was born, and moved to Rome to study singing. He has developed a considerable repertoire and performed in several recitals.

Besides music, he has many other interests. He is an expert in the use of medieval weapons and the history of the period, which has earned him a professional career in historical reconstructions of medieval pageants. He also practises martial arts, has studied Japanese and lived and worked in Japan. To finance his singing studies he works as a stuntman, and as such he has appeared in films such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Twelve, Franc Reyes’s Empire and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.