Silva Manfrè, born in Verona (I), combines a pronounced affinity for historically informed performance practice with the exploration of rarely performed and new works of the organ repertoire. She pursued her musical studies at the State Conservatory of Verona and at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna; decisive impulses were provided by her studies with Michael Radulescu as well as master classes with Gaston Litaize, Guy Bovet, Bernard Brauchli, Esteban Elizondo, Harald Vogel, Lorenzo Ghielmi, and Paolo Crivellaro. At the Scuola di Paleografia e Filologia Musicale in Cremona, she completed musicological studies with a dissertation on 20th-century organ music and was an Erasmus scholar at the University of Vienna.
Her concert activities as a soloist and chamber musician have taken Silva Manfrè to festivals in Italy (Musica Antica a Magnano, Asiago Festival Internazionale, Festival Mozart Rovereto, Festival Serassi, Antichi Organi Varese, and others), France (Festival International Orgues d’Été de Bordeaux), Austria (Donaufestwochen Grein, Innsbruck Organ Concerts, “Music for a while. Alte Musik in Bludenz”, Jeunesse and ORF/Ö1 in Vienna, and others), Switzerland (Festival Antegnati in Bellinzona, Rassegna organistica Valmaggese), Slovakia (Festival Slovenské historické organy in Bratislava), as well as Spain, Slovenia, Czech Republic, and other European countries. Radio recordings were made for ORF/Ö1, Radio Klassik Stephansdom, and the European Broadcasting Union.
A focal point of her work consists of first recordings and rediscoveries: For Brilliant Classics, Silva Manfrè released the world’s first complete recording of Ottavio Bariolla’s Ricercate per sonar d’Organo (1585) at the Antegnati organ of the Basilica of Santa Barbara in Mantua (Italy), as well as Franz Xaver Anton Murschhauser’s Prototypon Longo-Breve Organicum, recorded at the historic Freundt/Richter organ in Baumgartenberg (Austria); this recording was nominated for the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Central artistic concerns also include world premieres and first performances of works by composers such as Wolfgang Sauseng, Victor Estapé, and Pier Damiano Peretti.
Following her position as titular organist at the Cappella Musicale in the Cathedral of Padua, Silva Manfrè now serves as principal organist at the Piarist Church of St. Thekla in Vienna and has been teaching organ, chamber music, and basso continuo at the master classes of the Festival Musica Antica a Magnano in Piedmont (Italy) since 2018. Alongside her musical activities, she devotes herself intensively to languages and literature, teaches Italian at the Società Dante Alighieri in Vienna – whose board she helped shaping for several years as vice president – and worked as a translator for the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Bregenz Festival, the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, and the Wien Modern festival.
01/2026
Silva Manfrè _ CV 2026 en
Foto: Silva Manfrè (© Julia Wesely)
