Giorgio Battistelli. Artistic Director
Born in Albano Laziale in 1953, Giorgio Battistelli studied composition at the Conservatory of L’Aquila where he received his diploma in 1978. At the same time he attended seminars given by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel in Cologne. In 1978-1979 he took courses in contemporary music theatre taught by Jean Pierre Drouet and Gaston Sylvestre in Paris.
In 1981, the year he wrote Experimentum Mundi, he began an intense period of composing for music theatre. His works have been performed at the Festival d’Automne at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Salisburg and Lucerne Festivals, the Biennale and Gasteig in Munich, the Berlin Biennale, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, La Scala in Milan, the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, the Teatro Comunale in Florence, and opera houses around the world including Antwerp, Strasburg, Geneva, Breman, Mannheim, the Almeida in London, as well as Hong Kong, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington, Taipei, Tokyo, New York, Washington, Singapore, La Paz, and Peking.
His music has been performed by conductors such as Riccardo Muti, Antonio Pappano, Lorin Maazel, Daniele Gatti, Daniel Harding, Ádám Fischer, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, MyungWhun Chung, Susanna Mälkki, and Zoltán Peskó. He has collaborated with directors Robert Carsen, Luca Ronconi, Georges Lavaudant, Mario Martone, Michael Londsdale, David Pountney, Daniele Abbado, Fura dels Baus, and Studio Azzurro, and with artists such as Toni Servillo, Bruno Ganz, Ian Mc Diarmid, Philippe Leroy, Moni Ovadia, and Vladimir Luxuria. Conferred with the title Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and nominated “Commentatore dell'Ordine al merito”of Italian Republic, he has been Composer-in-residence at the Antwerp Opera, at the Deutsche Opera am Rhein in Düsseldorf and at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. He has garnered much experience as an Artistic Director with the Orchestra della Toscana (where he returned in 2011), the Venice Biennale, the Società Aquilana dei Concerti, the Accademia Filarmonica Romana, the Fondazione Arena di Verona, and the Cantiere d'Arte di Montepulciano.
He taught at Aldeburgh Music and in 2012 he held the masterclass“Progetto Opera” at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. 2012 was also the year of the debut of the oratorio Napucalisse in Teatro San Carlo of Naples. His opera for Teatro alla Scala is set to premier on May 2015 at the inauguration ceremonies for the Milan Expo. In October 2016, Il medico dei pazzi was filmed at the Malibran Theater, under the musical direction of Francesco Lanzillotta as a member of the orchestra and at the chorus of the Teatro la Fenice. At the premiere of October 15, four reruns followed. In April 2017, Lot was commissioned by the Staatsoper Theater in Hannover and performed with the Staatsoper Orchestra and Choir. Also in 2017 Orchestra rehearsal from the Münster Theater, Münster Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Fabrizio Ventura. In 2018, Riccardo III was taken over by the Teatro la Fenice, directed by Robert Carsen and in the same year he was awarded the 2018 "Franco Abbiati" Award for the "News for Italy" category. In February 2019, the 7 minutes Opera was commissioned by the Opéra National de Lorraine, with the libretto by Giorgio Battistelli (freely adapted from the text of the same name by Stefano Massini).
Since January 2020 he has been Artistic Director of the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago