Conductor Fabio Luisi now represented by 21C Media Group

21C Media Group is delighted to announce that it now represents preeminent Italian conductor Fabio Luisi. Now in his inaugural season as Principal Conductor of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Maestro Luisi may currently be seen leading a full six Met productions –including the company’s first new Ring cycle in almost 20 years. In June he is set to make his La Scala debut, and he begins his tenure as Music Director of the Zurich Opera at the start of the 2012-13 season. He also continues to serve as Chief Conductor of the Vienna Symphony, where he appears in May, before returning to Sapporo, Japan as Artistic Director of the Pacific Music Festival. Small wonder, then, that Luisi was recently profiled in both the Wall Street Journal and – with a cover story – the March issue of Opera News.
 
Since making his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2005, Maestro Luisi has led numerous Met productions, developing close ties with the company that culminated in his appointment as Principal Conductor in September 2011. Luisi’s work in this prestigious new role has inspired a wealth of consistently positive press, most recently for his leadership of the new Laurent Pelly production of Massenet’s Manon with superstar soprano Anna Netrebko. After the gala opening on March 26, the New York Times reported: “Mr. Luisi conducts a stylish, crisp performance of the score, allowing singers ample time to linger over arias, yet keeping things lithe and moving,” while the Wall Street Journal concluded: “It worked…especially with conductor Fabio Luisi giving the score a fleet, frothy energy.” This appreciative response is, however, nothing new; as veteran New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini observed at the Met last season, in a review titled “Plush and Lyrical Strauss (and That’s Just the Conducting)”: “Mr. Luisi provided sensitive support. No surprise there.”
 
The conductor’s remaining Met engagements this season will demonstrate his extraordinary range by a spectacular endeavor: conducting six different productions in the month of April – a feat not accomplished since it was done by James Levine back in 1979. In addition to Manon, Luisi leads Verdi’s La traviata, starring Natalie Dessay, and all four of the operas that make up Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, in the company’s first complete presentation of the monumental cycle in close to two decades. Between April 4 and May 7, Luisi conducts a superlative cast – headed by Bryn Terfel’s Wotan, Deborah Voigt’s Brünnhilde, Jay Hunter Morris’s Siegfried, and Stephanie Blythe’s Fricka – in multiple performances of Robert Lepage’s visionary new production of Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. Two of the Maestro’s spring Met appearances – Manon on April 7 and La traviata on April 14 – will also be transmitted live to movie theaters worldwide in the company’s popular and award-winning Met: Live in HD series.
 
In the 2012-13 season, Luisi’s Metropolitan Opera responsibilities will encompass David Alden’s eagerly-awaited new production of Un ballo in maschera, three complete Ring cycles, revivals of Aida and Les Troyens, and the Met Orchestra’s Carnegie Hall concert. The conductor will also be involved in three of next season’s Live in HD presentations: Un ballo in maschera (Dec 8), Aida (Dec 15), and Les Troyens (Jan 5, 2013).
 
In a recent NYC Arts video interview, Luisi discussed his work at the Met, describing his mission to communicate transcendence through music. As he explains,
 
“The audience has to leave the house at the end of the performance in a different mood than they came in. And if you let go, you feel different, because something which reach[es] you, reach[es] your soul… . This is our goal. I am very fortunate to do this job.”
 
After his Metropolitan Opera marathon this spring, the conductor heads to Europe to make two important debuts: first with the Filarmonica della Scala, leading a concert on May 21, followed by his opera debut at Milan’s storied Teatro alla Scala, where he conducts the Laurent Pelly Manon in June. He will also tour with the Filarmonica della Scala, in St. Petersburg and Baden-Baden in June and July. He is scheduled to return to La Scala in 2013 to lead Verdi’s Don Carlo in the fall. This September, meanwhile, Luisi embarks on his first season as Music Director of the historic Zurich Opera House, where, over the course of the 2012-13 season, he will direct three new opera productions – Janáček’s Jenufa, Verdi’s Rigoletto, and Bellini’s La Straniera – as well as four Zurich Philharmonia concerts and a total of 37 opera performances.
 
In May, as Chief Conductor of the Vienna Symphony, Luisi looks forward to undertaking Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The Book with Seven Seals); Bruch’s First Violin Concerto, with star violinist Joshua Bell; and Mahler’s First Symphony. Then in July and August he returns to Sapporo, Japan, to lead concerts and a conducting master class as Artistic Director of the Pacific Music Festival.
 
Among other impressive credentials, Luisi has formerly held top posts with some of Europe’s most respected orchestras. He was General Music Director of the Dresden State Opera and Dresden Staatskapelle; Music Director of Leipzig’s MDR Symphony Orchestra; Music Director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande; Chief Conductor of Vienna’s Tonkünstler Orchestra, and Music Director of the Graz Symphony. He has also appeared with many of the world’s most esteemed orchestras and opera companies, including the New York Philharmonic; L’Orchestre de Paris; Bavarian Radio Symphony; Oslo Philharmonic; Vienna Philharmonic; San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston Symphony Orchestras; Cleveland Orchestra; Philadelphia Orchestra; NHK Symphony; Munich Philharmonic; Rome’s Santa Cecilia Orchestra; Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw; the Vienna State Opera; Bavarian State Opera; Opera Bastille, Paris; Barcelona’s Liceu; London’s Royal Opera House; Berlin’s Deutsche Oper and State Opera, as well as at the Salzburg Festival.
 
The conductor’s extensive discography includes lesser-known Verdi operas (Jérusalem, Alzira, and Aroldo), Rossini’s William Tell, Salieri’s La locandiera, and Bellini’s I puritani. He has also recorded all the symphonies – as well as the oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln – of neglected Austrian composer Franz Schmidt; the complete orchestral works of Arthur Honegger; Schumann’s four symphonies; orchestral music by Respighi and Liszt; a series of the most important symphonic poems by Richard Strauss, as well as an Echo Award-winning recording of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony with the Dresden Staatskapelle.
 
A native of Genoa, Italy, Fabio Luisi studied piano at the city’s Conservatorio Nicolò Paganini and in Paris with Aldo Ciccolini, before training as a conductor under Milan Horvat at Austria’s Graz High School of Music. More information about him is available here, and a list of his upcoming engagements is provided below.
 
 
Fabio Luisi: upcoming engagements
 
March 26 & 31; April 3, 7, 11, 14, 17, 20, & 23
New York, NY
Metropolitan Opera
Massenet: Manon

April 4, 7, & 26; May 5
New York, NY
Metropolitan Opera
Wagner: Das Rheingold 

April 6, 10, 14, 18, & 25; May 2
New York, NY
Metropolitan Opera
Verdi: La traviata

April 13 & 28; May 7
New York, NY
Metropolitan Opera
Wagner: Die Walküre

April 21 & 30
New York, NY
Metropolitan Opera
Wagner: Siegfried

April 24, May 3
New York, NY
Metropolitan Opera
Wagner: Götterdämmerung

May 13 & 14
Vienna, Austria
Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde
Vienna Symphony
Schmidt: Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The Book with Seven Seals)
(Soloists include René Pape, bass)
 
May 21
Milan, Italy
Teatro alla Scala
Filarmonica della Scala (debut) with Rafal Blechacz, piano
Gabrieli: Three Canzonas (transcribed for large orchestra by Claudio Ambrosini)
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4
Casella: Paganiniana
Respighi: Feste romane

May 25, 26, & 27
Vienna, Austria
Vienna Symphony with Joshua Bell, violin 
Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1
Mahler: Symphony No. 1

June 19, 22, 25, & 29; July 2, 5, & 7
Milan, Italy
Teatro alla Scala (opera debut)
Massenet: Manon

June 27
St. Petersburg, Russia
Filarmonica della Scala
White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg

July 1
Baden-Baden, Germany
Filarmonica della Scala with Hélène Grimaud, piano
 
July 16-Aug 6
Sapporo, Japan
Pacific Music Festival
Concerts and master class

Sept 23, 26, & 30; Oct 4, 7
Zurich, Switzerland
Zürich Opera House
Janáček: Jenufa

Sept 29; Oct 6, 10
Zurich, Switzerland
Zurich Opera House
Puccini: Tosca
 
Nov 8, 12, 15, 19, 24, 27, & 30; Dec 4, 8, & 14
New York, NY
Metropolitan Opera
Verdi: Un ballo in maschera

Nov 23, 26, & 29; Dec 3, 7, 12, 15, 19, 22, & 28
New York, NY
Metropolitan Opera
Verdi: Aida

Dec 2
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
 
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