The harp was in the house already
The full story, followed by training, orchestras and competitions for quick reference. A short, citable version is in the press kit.
The harp was always my first choice. My older sister had one on loan, standing in the living room, and growing up beside it I fell in love with the instrument. When I auditioned for the Conservatorio di Musica di Cagliari I was accepted for harp, flute and violin, and I chose the harp. I was eleven, and it decided the rest of my life.
Nine years at the Conservatorio "G.P. da Palestrina" followed, with Annamaria Melis, who gave me the technique and the stubbornness to get through the years when I wanted to stop. I finished in February 2016 with full marks and honours, and immediately enrolled in a physics degree, because in Sardinia a musician's life still gets called a hobby and I wanted a floor under my feet.
Physics did not survive contact with the harp. The instrument takes everything: hands, hours, attention. What ended the argument was sitting in on an orchestra rehearsal at the conservatoire and hearing, from the inside, the sound I had spent nine years learning to belong to. I left the faculty that year. The orchestral life itself began in 2017, when I won a place in the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana with Ravel's Introduction et Allegro on one of my first programmes.
Then came the leaving. Fiesole first, then weekly trains to Brescia to work with Anna Loro, who changed how I hold the instrument and how I read a score. Then Brussels, the Conservatoire royal, and Annie Lavoisier: solo harpist of the Belgian National Orchestra and a direct heir of the French school of Pierre Jamet. Two masters followed, both with the jury's grande distinction: the solo master from 2019 to 2021, then the specialised master in 2021 and 2022, where I worked on Ginastera's Concerto Op. 25 and its extended techniques.
Belgium kept me. I play as a guest harpist with the Belgian National Orchestra. At La Monnaie I do not play in the pit at all: I sit on the management side of the music department, as assistant orchestra manager, coordinating the chamber music activities and supporting the running of the orchestra's activities. In 2024 I also spent six months as artistic coordinator at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel. Around all of that runs everything else: contemporary ensembles, four chamber projects, cardboard harps, and rooms full of babies.
Sardinia is not behind me. I still teach and play there, and the tunes I put in front of two-year-olds in Evere are often the ones I grew up with.