BIOGRAPHY
FRANCO SPOTO has appeared extensively throughout the United States, Canada and Europe in concert, musical theater, opera and what he refers to as his up-close-and-personal shows. Among many highlights were concerts with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic.
He was seen as Ciccio and Giuseppe in a highly acclaimed revival of The Most Happy Fella at Broadway’s Majestic Theater, later presented nationally on the Great Performances series on PBS. There soon followed a stint with Sammy Cahn in his review: Sammy Cahn, Words and Music. Franco then created his own show, which he has since performed on over 500 stages across the U.S. and Canada, on cruise ships around the world and for sold-out engagements at Caesar’s Circus Maximus in Atlantic City, NJ.
Along the way Franco has found time to be Instructor of voice, music theory and conducting at Bluffton College in Ohio, serve as Artistic Director of the North Pointe Cultural Arts Center in Columbia County, NY, teach remarkably talented people challenged by Williams Syndrom and develop the following philosophy of teaching the art of singing: The Old Italian School of singing, generally regarded as the source of Bel Canto (which means beautiful singing), studied the sensations of natural singers and the physiology of the throat, head and thorax as it relates to muscles throughout the body in order to understand the relationship between actions and the sensations, which they engender. The result was the creation of singers whose technique followed the laws of nature, a coordination, which appeared, because it was, perfectly natural. The study of singing should encompass the physical development of the vocal instrument with its complex of some sixty muscles and the coordination of their balanced movements within the entire body's framework, with the goal of gaining control of all elements of the person, that the effort of singing may then be turned over to the mind where nature will work its wonders and the tuned voice will respond accurately to the imagination.
EDUCATION
B. Music, Oberlin College Conservatory of Music
Graduate Study, The Juilliard School
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