Sir Antonio Pappano

Born in the UK in 1959 to Italian parents, Antonio Pappano studied piano, composition, and conducting in the USA and gained important experiences as an assistant to Michael Gielen in Frankfurt and Daniel Barenboim in Bayreuth. He made his debut as an opera conductor in 1987 at the Norske Opera Oslo, which appointed him Music Director in 1990. In 1992, Pappano took the helm at Brussels’ Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, which he presided over for ten years. He has served as Music Director of the Royal Opera House in London since 2002, leading a new production of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung and such world premieres as Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nicole. Since 2005, Pappano has additionally held the principal position at the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia – Roma; in 2024, he will succeed Sir Simon Rattle at the London Symphony Orchestra. Pappano is also in demand worldwide as a guest conductor: in 1993, he celebrated his spectacular debut at the Vienna Staatsoper when he stepped in at the last minute for Christoph von Dohnányi at the premiere of a new production of Wagner’s Siegfried. He mad his first appearance at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1997 and at Bayreuth (with Lohengrin) in 1999.At the Salzburg Festival in 2013, he conducted Verdi’s Don Carlo in the five-act version. Sir Antonio Pappano has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. His CDs have won such distinctions as the Gramophone Award, the Diapason d’or, the Prix Caecilia, and the German Record Critics’ Annual Prize. Pappano was awarded the Premio Abbiati in Italy in 2005, and in 2012 he was named Cavaliere di Gran Croce nell’Ordine al Merito and raised to the peerage in the United Kingdom.

August 2022