Carlo Rizzi Musical director

Season 24/25 Artist

Carlo Rizzi has worked extensively in the domain of symphonic music and opera, conducting the canons of the repertoire with the same flair as rarities by Bellini, Cimarosa and Donizetti. He has been invited to some of the most prestigious international theatres and festivals and conducted some of the greatest symphonic orchestras.

Even so, it is opera which forms the central pillar of his career. Since making his debut in 1982 with Donizetti’s L’ajo nell’imbarazzo, he has conducted around a hundred operatic works, in a repertoire focused not only on Italian opera but also works by Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Benjamin Britten, and Leoš Janáček.

He was musical director of Welsh National Opera from 1992 to 2001, and from 2004 to 2008, and was named conductor emeritus of Welsh National Opera in 2015. Since Septembre 2019, he has been the Music Director of the Opera Rara, a British Company dedicated to revive unknown or forgotten operatic works, with which he has recently recorded Leoncavallo’s Zingari.

He is frequently invited to perform at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, La Scala in Milan, the Paris Opera, the Teatro Real in Madrid... He has conducted ensembles such as the Hallé Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal…

Recently, he conducted The Sicilian Vespers, Le Nozze di Figaro and Madama Butterfly at the Welsh National Opera, Rigoletto for his Oslo debut, La Cenerentola at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Valencia, Tosca at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Tosca, La Bohème, Médée and Don Carlos at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, I due Foscari at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Il Proscritto at the Barbican Centre in London, La Gazetta at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro. 

His extensive discography, includes Faust, Kátia Kabanová, Rigoletto and La Traviata recorded at the Salzburg Festival, which won the 2006 Grammy for Best Opera Recording.

At the Paris Opera: Norma, 1996 ; Simon Boccanegra, 1997 ; Rigoletto, 1998 ; La Cenerentola, 2002 ; Don Carlo, 2010 ; La Fanciulla del West, 2014 ; Cavalleria rusticana / Sancta Susanna, 2016 ; Cendrillon, 2022 ; Il Trovatore, 2023