Draft:Rafael Montero (singer)

Rafael Montero is an Argentinian tenor, based in London, UK and Germany (Cologne, Hannover, Wurzburg) where he works as a solo and ensemble singer, singing teacher and coach. He is founder of the early music ensemble El Parnaso Hyspano, dedicated to the performance of early Spanish and Latin Americn Music.

Rafael’s heritage is Inca and Spanish, and he has spoken Quichua since he was a child. He studied singing at the Conservatorio Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina and then in early and chamber music at the Conservatoire de Musique de Neuchatel, Switzerland. He specialises in renaissance Spanish and South American Baroque music and also in romantic and contemporary chamber music from Hispanic South America, with a particular specialism in music sung in indigenous languages. In 2008, he sang at the first BachFest Cochabamba, Bolivia under the direction of Elizabeth Schwimmer under the sponsorship of the Simon Patino foundation, Geneva. In 2016, he created the first Ancient Music Festival in Jujuy, Argentina "Xuxuy Barroco", where he performed with the Orquesta Infanto Juvenil de Jujuy. In 2019 he made his London debut with the British accompanist Nigel Foster in a programme of South American Art Songs.

In 2020 he initiated a project to give the first modern performances and recordings of the songs of Peruvian/Bolivian composer Pedro Ximénez Abril Y Tirado (1784-1856). In 2022 he was responsible for the first UK performance of Domenico Zipoli's (1688-1725) sacred opera "San Ignacio de Loyola", written while a Jesuit missionary in Latin America for indigenous people to perform. In 2023 this was given its first UK staging in the Grimeborn Opera Festival at the Arcola Theatre. The production was acknowledged for its original contribution to the repertoire. In October 2022 he created and sang the title role in "El Indiano" a dramatised imagined encounter between Latin American and English musical cultures of the 17th Century. The performance was premiered at Sands Films Music Theatre, London.

He collaborates with Prof Nepomuk Riva in facilitating anti-racist workshops for music in education financed by the German Bildungspolitik. He is also a regular columnist for the Argentinian newspaper El Tribuno where he writes on arts and culture.