A musical career was never Giorgia Fumanti’s plan. She remembers gentle songs shared with her grandmother at home but Giorgia never really sang until she was seventeen. “I never said I want to be a singer. I was a very shy girl.” She imagined other career paths but found herself at loss as a teenager navigating that difficult time of life. She found peace in church and when she heard the church needed young people for the choir she volunteered. She emphatically states that the decision was “not because I want to be a singer, not because I have a voice just for the service.”
Giorgia brought along a friend because she was too nervous to go alone. She thought she could “hide” in the back but found that wasn’t an option. “The director was a very passionate tenor and ask us to come in front to sing something, and I was extremely embarrassed and shy. Finally, I tried to do the same sound that he was doing on the piano and this little natural soprano voice came out and everybody was super surprised. First of all myself.”
Only three months later Giorgia was a featured soloist in the choir’s Christmas concert and her love grew from there. Her family couldn’t imagine a career in the arts and so Giorgia dutifully tried to pursue a career in law. “I said to myself, maybe it’s just an illusion and I tried to do normal good things that society recognized more than music. I went far away from music for a couple of years.” Despite her best intentions, it was clear she had a heart for music. “Finally I took the courage to believe and follow my dreams in spite of the challenges.”
It wasn’t an easy path forward, Giorgia describes the difficulty of working with teachers who almost “destroyed” her natural voice. “I had many life lessons to learn, to recognize the talent, the gift, and then study, in the respect of my nature, that was one of the biggest learning I had to do to accept my nature.”
She studied at the Conservatory of Music in Parma, Italy. As her career continued to progress she told the “scary” step of moving to Canada without the safety net of family and friends. “Well, that’s the dream,” she says thoughtfully. “and then we started to work very hard.” Soon after Giorgia was signed by EMI records.
The classical crossover genre had been steadily growing momentum in the 1990s with Sarah Brightman, Andrea Bocelli, and Charlotte Church finding worldwide fame. The 2000s likewise proved an important period with the emergence of stars like Russell Watson, Bond, Hayley Westenra, and more all trying to break into the North American market.
Public television played an important role in this and Giorgia was featured in three PBS specials: “Heavenly Voices”, “Sharing Christmas with John McDermott” and “Benise’s Spanish Guitars”. She had a distinctive crystal-clear soprano and audiences were touched by the sincerity of her interpretations showcased in her first albums “Like a Dream” and “From My Heart.” The latter went on to place on the Billboard’s Top 20 Crossover Chart and she has sold over 1.2 million albums to date.
Giorgia found herself sharing the stage with legends like José Carreras, Michael Bolton, and Lang Lang. She was also a featured singer at the Shanghai Special Olympics and a special guest at the Bejing Olympics. “Every time I went to China, the audiences on TV, they were numbers that I couldn’t even imagine. They were like 100 million viewers, numbers that are so big you don’t even think about it, you just go and you perform.”
Now with years more experience Giorgia views this incredible period of her career with gratitude: gratitude that it happened, and gratitude that she can now approach her career on her own terms. “There were really many artists that were coming out and I was lucky enough to be one of the many. At the same time. I was at the beginning of my career, so it was a lot.” Giorgia describes herself as a sensitive soul and she often found it difficult to become unaffected. “I had a huge production around me. I was very lucky to be recording in Abbey Road with the best musicians… it was beautiful. It was beautiful but sometimes it was too much for a material commercial result. In a way, of course you need to make a lot of money because they invest a lot of money in you but sometimes it doesn’t go with the normal growth of an artist. I believe as an artist, in every field, the more you grow, the more you are confident and experienced, the more beautiful and true and comfortable you become. But in this case, you are just a machine to deliver.” She loved the experiences of working with a good team, and talented musicians and touring the UK and Asia but she also had personal goals that were important to accomplish like becoming a mother. While such moves may not always be approved by the record label, Giorgia is fortunate to have support from her manager (and also husband).
It is clear that for Giorgia being a mother is the highlight of her life. “I have four kids now; two biological and two adopted. This is something that was such a long journey for me to achieve through wonderful miracles and difficult times. Now that I have the four of them, my heart is so full of love that when I sing, I emanate all that.”
Listeners can enjoy the evolution of Giorgia’s voice and expression through her recording catalog – she currently has twelve albums and is already working on another. “My voice has definitely changed so much in the last 20 years. My voice has opened so much more and is much freer despite what the industry wants me to believe that a woman, especially a woman, is to stay young all their life and it’s impossible! And it’s always on the woman. I don’t know why the men become Maestro but women need to stay twenty-five all of their lives,” Giorgia is decidedly against this notion.
Being an artist is a lifelong journey of discovery. “I’m still working every day on my confidence, on learning to love myself, because it’s very easy for me to look at myself and to recognize certain abilities but then to criticize another part. We are human, and we are all born to learn. I know that when I sing so deeply my heart is filled with joy and the desire to share with others.” As a young artist she was sometimes stressed by the attention given to physical appearance and she admits that it still sometimes bothers her but says, “I just want to share the magic of music – it’s even stronger today than twenty years ago.” As a child, Giorgia was told that her sensitivity “was a problem” and that she would be limited by it but the years have taught her just the opposite. “Being sensitive has now become my strength.”
Planning for Giorgia’s latest album “Mystic” began during the 2020 pandemic. “Nobody knew what was really going on. And many musicians were thinking it was the end of our careers and everything so we just wanted to make the most beautiful music to inspire ourselves. So we chose this selection of huge classical pieces that had nothing to do with commercial needs, just the desire to expand.”
The album also marked two profound moments in Giorgia’s life, a new life, and a devastating loss. “During the recording in August, I was blessed with the arrival of a child,” Giorgia agreed to foster the infant who was only two days old and calls it “such a blessing in my life. My heart was open full of love.”
Only fifteen days later, however, Giorgia was shattered by the news of her father’s passing. “It was definitely a huge shock because he was very young. He was very sick but I couldn’t say goodbye to him because the pandemic didn’t allow me to travel.” The album turned into a loving tribute to him. While she says she knows he is “guiding her from another world” losing her father also filled Giorgia with a sense of purpose. “It gave me even more determination to accomplish what I want to accomplish in this lifetime because everybody will leave sooner or later. So, it gives me this determination to keep doing all we can, to pray to inspire millions of hearts all over the world.”
Giorgia looks forward to resuming performing in Canada, Greece, and England where she will release “Mystic.” She is careful to balance performances around her children’s school terms as much as possible. Giorgia says, “My biggest achievement are my four kids.” She does her best to protect their privacy but is so obviously proud of her family and tells us the journey to becoming a mother was not easy. “I lost four pregnancies and it destroyed my heart. I was blessed with two biological children. My two other are from adoption and foster families. It’s been such a long journey that I know so many women go through and now to have a success in my family it’s something I’ve very proud of. I wanted to share with other women that go through mourning and difficulties to become a mother and show that you can be a mom in many different ways.”
To order physical copies of “Mystic” and see Giorgia’s full touring schedule visit:
www.giorgiafumanti.com
