Silvio Barbato

Silvio Sergio Bonaccorsi Barbato (11 May 19591 June 2009) was an Italian-Brazilian opera conductor and composer. He died on board Air France Flight 447. Life and career Maestro Barbato was born in Italy, the son of Daniele Barbato and Rosalba Bonaccorsi, daughter of Silvio and Alvara Bonaccorsi and granddaughter of Celestino and Luigi Bonaccorsi, descendants of the Bonaccorsi brothers, originally from Fornaci di Barga, (Italy), who emigrated to Brazil at the end of the 19th century. His grandparents were both doctors in Candeias (Minas Gerais), (Brazil). His father died in Brasília, of a heart attack, in the 1990s, when at the time he was a professor at the university of the capital. He graduated in “conducting” at the University of Brasília; he studied conducting and composition first with Cláudio Santoro and then he moved to Milan where he continued with Azio Corghi at “Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi”. In 1984 he received his merit degree at the “Accademia Musicale Chigiana” of Siena, and one year later he graduated from the “Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi”, also receiving the gold medal in High Conducting, the first Brazilian to receive of this honour since Carlos Gomes. His conduct