VIVIANA NEBULONI

Viviana Nebuloni is a Milanese soprano and a Music Entrepreneur. Viviana is an interdisciplinary soul: a bewitching voice that has enriched the stages of many theatres and simultaneously an entrepreneur who gave life first to Operitage in 2018, an association which works with all the theatre workers and more recently to Orchestra, a new platform which aims to become the new LinkedIn for musicians.

Who passed on the devotion to music to you? Do you still remember the first music that made you fall in love?

I would like to answer with a rare opera title or a niche composition, but the truth is that my love for music was born almost by force of nature: my mother wanted me to study piano. More than the music itself, I fell in love with the possibility of playing, of creating, of shaping something through interpretation. From there my journey into piano music began and, like many girls of my generation fascinated by the aesthetics of Twilight, one of the pieces that accompanied me most during my study period was Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy. From then on, I immersed myself in the romantic piano repertoire, allowing myself to be transported deeper and deeper into this world.

Tell us about your musical and university studies. Did you always want to pursue both paths?

Again, mine was not an entirely spontaneous choice. Originally I was supposed to become a plastic surgeon, but then I found myself studying law and conservatoire at the same time, facing both paths with no small amount of effort. In order to maintain a mental balance between the two, while I was preparing my private law exam, I started to build something of my own: I founded a music association that brought together musicians from the conservatory to create work opportunities in environments not conventionally related to music, such as the world of fashion, design and even spaces completely outside the traditional circuit, such as community centres, swimming pools and hospitals. This allowed me to explore new connections between music and other worlds, broadening my artistic and professional vision.

Woman, entrepreneur in the music industry, can you summarise the active projects you have at the moment?

My main goal at the moment is to make Orchestra known and put it on everyone’s lips. The name itself has an extraordinary strength: it is simple, straightforward and spoken in the same way in all the languages of the world, even in Chinese. This gives it enormous potential internationally.

Orchestra’s plan is to become the first national – and, one day, maybe even worldwide – platform that functions as a real LinkedIn for musicians. The idea is to allow individuals, companies, foundations, associations, orchestras and any legal entity to find and hire music professionals directly, eliminating middlemen and agency fees. Our goal is to make the sector more transparent and fair, valuing talent without unnecessary economic or bureaucratic barriers.

Let’s delve into the world of Orchestra together!

The world of Orchestra is a purple world, deliberately chosen to symbolise the lent and economic drought that many arts and entertainment professionals are forced to experience. My partner Marina Serpagli and I are not superstitious, but we are aware that the dominant colour in the music market is often black, which represents exploitation, even when the activities are in order.

This phenomenon is particularly evident in orchestras, even the most prestigious ones, which struggle enormously to survive with state funding and the difficulties of finding private sponsors. Many of these realities are run by CEOs and presidents of foundations who struggle to give musicians a proper dignity. For our part, our goal is to change the narrative and start with small concrete actions to give dignity to workers in the music sector. We are starting by offering solutions to regularise the contracts of our artists, just as cooperatives do, with a full package of services, including contributions and opening up.

There is so much to be done, and we are committed to working with all the realities that want to become partners and contribute to our mission. We already have the support of very prestigious figures, such as Mrs Muti, who is our godmother, and experts such as Paolo Gavazzeni and Sabino Lenoci. In addition, we collaborate with important theatres and foundations, as well as national conservatories, who embrace our vision of positive change in the sector. The world of opera always makes one think of a bygone world, of an older audience, but both you and I are proof that young people live for theatre, as protagonists, disseminators and users.

How do you think you could attract a younger audience to the theatre?

I can tell you first of all what does not work in the world of popularisers today – although I do not consider myself one. Many people improvise as popularisers without any real preparation, and often the content is distributed superficially. This attitude intimidates the press offices of theatres, which already face great difficulties in managing their own communication. A year ago I probably would not have answered you this way, but today, as I enter more and more into the institutional world of work, I am even more convinced: the real problem, apart from the need to sell tickets, is an image problem.

At root, I believe that the most effective way to bring young people closer to classical music, opera and theatre is to invest in young graphic artists and designers. We need a new, contemporary visual look that can communicate with young people and make the theatre more accessible and attractive. This can be done by involving students from the leading design and communication schools in Italy, such as the IED, IULM, Bocconi, the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and NABA. We must ensure that these young talents have the opportunity to reinterpret our artistic and cultural heritage with a fresh eye, creating a visual and narrative language that can speak to their peers.

What excites you most about your world? Performing or working behind the scenes on your entrepreneurial projects?

I can tell you that I get excited about everything in my world. I cannot clearly separate the stage from the work behind the scenes, because both are part of me. They are not two antagonistic roles; on the contrary, they complement each other. Some people know me only as a performer, others only as an entrepreneur, but I am both. This dual role allows me to bring together two worlds that often do not communicate with each other: that of the client and that of the musician. I understand the needs of those who have to manage an event or a theatre, but I also understand the needs of those who go on stage and want to be valued in the right way. I have yet to find a figure like mine: often you are either on one side or the other, while I manage to move on both fronts, bringing together realities that might otherwise remain distant.

If there is something that excites me less, it is what I see on social media. Not because digital is the enemy, but because it often reduces the work to a showcase, a faded reflection of what theatre can really give. The theatre experience is immersion, it is something you should live without feeling the need to take pictures of yourself in the stalls or to show the world that you are there, with the right dress and the right attitude. I like to think that going to the theatre is a small, guarded luxury, a bit like first love: something precious that you want to keep to yourself, without flaunting it. It is a feeling that is difficult to protect today. And yes, I too have contributed to this aesthetic of ‘showing off’, but as I grow older, I realise that growing older also means learning to protect what is most dear to us.

We did the Olympia Tales podcast together. What was it like collaborating with Orlando and how would you like to develop the project?

Olympia Tales was a special experience, because it is not just a podcast, but a real Imaginary Theatre, a place where the word becomes a show and the voice becomes a stage set. And if there is someone who knows how to turn a microphone into a curtain that opens, it is you, Antonella. An excellent hostess, capable of welcoming guests with intelligence, warmth and a naturalness that makes you feel immediately at home. And then there is Orlando, who is a forge of beauty and great elegance. In a digital landscape where you often have to shout to be heard, you have chosen a different path: that of refinement, of well-considered words, of aesthetics that does not need to impose itself, but allows itself to be discovered. It is something rare, and it is precisely this uniqueness that makes our project so special. And for the future? Who knows… maybe our Imaginary Theatre could finally move into a real theatre! Olympia Tales already has the makings of a live show, and the idea of taking it to a real stage, with the audience sitting in the stalls, would be a natural evolution. After all, theatre is born from words… and we have already started to tell.

Collaborations with fashion labels Dolce and Gabbana, Luisa Beccaria. What do you enjoy about fashion, what bores you and how have you collaborated with it?

Fashion is a great production machine, capable of profoundly influencing the way we live and think about beauty. It is a world we admire from the outside, just like opera: fascinating, exclusive, difficult to really delve into if you are not in it. As a performer, I have had the opportunity to sing for haute couture events, in glossy settings where aesthetics is everything. And I can say that wearing an extraordinary dress is a fun experience, almost a role-play that tickles a soprano’s ego. There is an inherent theatricality in wearing a garment designed to impress.

But if we talk about entrepreneurial stimuli, fashion is not the field that involves me the most. I prefer to deal with realities that have nothing to do with music or aesthetics, such as pharmaceuticals, consulting or human resources. These are ‘colder’ fields, seemingly distant from art, but for this very reason they intrigue me: taking music into unexpected contexts is a more fascinating challenge than staying in traditional circuits.

With what other arts would you like to contaminate your creative vision?

I would definitely like to contaminate my creative vision with design and architecture, because I believe that opera singing, opera performance, can give much more to spaces than a theatre. We are always looking for a theatre and instead we don’t realise that they can be built, redesigned and modelled, hybrid spaces that are much more interesting for artistic growth and for contact with oneself. This, for someone inside my world, might seem like an attempt to break free from the academic sphere, but I firmly believe in this, so much so that on my profiles you will find partnerships with Sara Ricciardi Studio, which you know very well, Antonella, and then there are also collaborations with the Tempio del Futuro Perduto (Temple of the Lost Future) , which is a recovery space where this association has really turned the place around, making it a point of reference for cultural activities for young people, and it also does so through the language and hobbies and passions of my peers, which can be techno music, painting, recycling, bartering, playful, historical, literary and musical activities, but also other things that cannot be pigeonholed.Everything that cannot be pigeonholed for me is a stimulus for human, even before artistic, growth. The avant-garde beats any label.

Was there a moment or decision that made you feel particularly proud of the path you have taken so far, a step that made you realise you were on the right track?

I have to be completely honest, I think the stumbling blocks I encountered were the real driving forces behind my journey. Rather than moments of confirmation, it was facing the difficulties that made me realise I was on the right path. A concrete example is when someone who had started the journey with me gave up for a permanent position, or when we had to revise our business model due to legal difficulties, not to mention the problems with the IT programmer that slowed down the development of our platform. All these obstacles were never a defeat, but a confirmation that the things that take the most effort to develop are the ones that are destined to become big businesses. And the more difficulties there were, the more I felt we had to move forward.

This strength of will, shared with my partner Marina Serpagli, is what gave me the confirmation that we were on the right track. Continuing, despite everything, made me realise that our path was genuine and that the commitment was never too great for what we were building together.