Mariam Battistelli is one of those rare divas who can carry a Puccini aria or the proverbial pigskin with equal ease, though not necessarily at the same time.
These days, the European opera singer is content to relive her gridiron glory by singing to kick off football games.
She had to make a choice. If she were injured on the football field, it would be far harder to sing the role of Pamina in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
“Football was too dangerous,” she said by phone from Vienna. Still, she made her mark.
Whatever fame she found on the turf is more than outdone by her vocal prowess. The lyric soprano, who frequently sings with Andrea Boccelli, famed pop singer turned opera star, has found renown in European opera houses as well as in film.
Ms. Battistelli, 38, is making her U.S. debut here in the Toledo area this weekend during Pursuit Media Group’s Cultural Exchange event. While here, she’ll spend some time performing and also helping to open up the new Toledo opera season.
The Toledo tour
Pursuit Media Group CEO Stayce Fowler, a friend of Ms. Battistelli’s, invited her to Toledo because Ms. Battistelli missed an appearance at last year’s Italian Bowl, played at the Glass Bowl at the University of Toledo, because of her film role. She was to have sung the Italian national anthem as well as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but she had to cancel because it conflicted with her role in Opera!-Arie per un’eclissie (Arias for an Eclipse), now playing in Europe.
Ms. Battistelli arrived in Toledo on Thursday. Activities include a Sunday dinner at TolHouse before the Toledo Opera’s curtain rises next week on Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, about an Ethiopian princess who has been enslaved by the Egyptians and serves the king’s daughter, Amneris, who does not know Aida’s royal bloodline. The women want the same thing: the Egyptian warrior Radames, who returns Aida’s love.
The story, while fiction, has a special significance for Ms. Battistelli, who was born in Ethiopia and adopted by an Italian family.
“It is incredibly fortuitous that Mariam Battistelli, an Ethiopian-born soprano, will be in Toledo at the exact moment and be able to celebrate with us,” said Kate French, co-chairman of the committee presenting Sunday’s activities. “Her presence adds something incredibly special and personal to the evening.”
Kevin Bylsma, artistic director for the Toledo Opera, said the timing of her appearance will last for more than one evening.
“We are pleased to be a part of introducing an artist of Mariam’s stature to the Toledo community,” he said.
On Saturday, she will join the UT Homecoming Parade. Also, she will sing “The Star Spangled Banner” before the Rockets face off at 3:30 p.m. against the Buffalo Bills.
At 7 p.m. Saturday, Ms. Battistelli will have another chance to show off her voice at Opera di Notte, or Night of Opera, at the Franciscan Center in Sylvania, with the Clarence Smith Community Chorus and Chris Scholl, tenor and associate professor at Bowling Green State University. General admission is $35 with VIP tickets $50.
Opera career grows
Ms. Battistelli has performed in Europe’s major opera houses, including the Teatro Alla Scala, in Milan, the Vienna State Opera, Staatsoper Hamburg, Glyndebourne, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, and other notable houses, and she’s won major vocal prizes on her way up the her own career scale.
She was 8 months old when she was adopted from an orphanage in Addis Ababa by a couple and went to live with them in Mantua, in northern Italy. Her interest in opera began early, fostered by her grandmother’s love of the art form.
While still young, her interest in sports, especially American football, propelled her to the field.
“I played tag football and tackle,” she said from Vienna.
American football has been growing in popularity, as evidenced by the two Italian Bowls, the championship games of the Italian Football League, that was played in Toledo, in 2023 and 2025.
In 2014, for Ms. Battistelli, four years after Rigoletto from Mantua, where she sang the role of a page, she won the Italian Championship with the Fenici Ferrara. She played flag football and finished second in the Spanish Championship. She also played rugby and was a long-distance runner.
Sports is important to her, but so is opera.
As opera struggles in the United States and the United Kingdom, it is thriving in continental Europe.
As a Black woman, Ms. Battistelli said Black singers are not as prevalent in Europe as in the United States, but she doesn’t face discrimination in the opera house.
“I was lucky,” Ms. Battistelli said. “My mother always teach me if someone has a problem with you, it’s not your problem. It’s theirs. This is something that they have to solve themselves.
“She really taught me not to think of my color as an obstacle.”
Still, she said, “colleagues have not been chosen for roles because of their color or not really welcomed.”
Ms. Battistelli takes issue too with the complaint that operas aren’t relevant, or that the different languages are a barrier to understanding.
“If it’s well sung and with passion, we can understand, even if we don’t understand the words or the meaning of the words,” she said.
While the stories might be from a different time period, the basic plots — love, jealousy, revenge — are entirely human.
For example, in Puccini’s La Boheme, “A man and woman love each other but cannot stay together because of the difficulties of their life. So it’s not that opera stories are too old,” she said. “I think this is something that really makes me enjoy music, enjoy my job, even in difficult times.”
Ms. Fowler, the founder and CEO of Pursuit Media Group, assures those who are unfamiliar or dislike opera, should not dismiss the chance to listen to what Ms. Battistelli has to say.
“Mariam’s visit to Toledo is about so much more than opera,” Ms. Fowler said. “It is about creating a moment where culture, community, and global connection come together in our city.”
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