Sir Antonio Pappano has been named Conductor of the Year at the prestigious International Opera Awards. The awards were announced on 9 November at a gala ceremony Teatr Wielki, Polish National Opera. The ceremony was streamed live on OperaVision and is available to watch through 21 December 2023.
Founded in 2012, the International Opera Awards is an annual celebration of excellence in opera around the world. Over the last six years the International Opera Awards has raised funds for the Opera Awards Foundation to support bursaries for almost 100 aspiring artists, including singers, directors, conductors, répétiteurs and accompanists. Judging of the International Opera Awards is carried out by a jury of industry professionals headed by Opera editor John Allison.
One of today’s most sought-after conductors, acclaimed for his charismatic leadership and inspirational performances in both symphonic and operatic repertoire, Sir Antonio Pappano is Chief Conductor Designate of the London Symphony Orchestra (assuming the full title from the 2024/2025 season) and has been Music Director of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden since 2002. He is Music Director Emeritus of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, having served as Music Director from 2005-2023. Nurtured as a pianist, repetiteur and assistant conductor at many of the most important opera houses of Europe and North America, including at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and several seasons at the Bayreuth Festival as musical assistant to Daniel Barenboim, Pappano was appointed Music Director of Oslo’s Den Norske Opera in 1990, and from 1992-2002 served as Music Director of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. From 1997-1999 he was Principal Guest Conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Pappano is in demand as an opera conductor at the highest international level, including with the Metropolitan Opera New York, the State Operas of Vienna and Berlin, the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals, Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Teatro alla Scala, and has appeared as a guest conductor with many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Berlin, Vienna and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio, Chicago and Boston Symphonies, the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Orchestre de Paris. He maintains a particularly strong relationship with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Highlights of the 23/24 season and beyond include and wide-ranging European tours with the London Symphony, and flagship concerts at their home in London’s Barbican Centre, with repertoire including Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe, orchestral masterpieces from Beethoven and Strauss to Bartok, Boulanger, Ades and Rachmaninov, and world premieres by Hannah Kendall and Wynton Marsalis. He also makes his debut with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, return visits to the Royal Concertgebouw and Staatskapelle Dresden, and new productions of Elektra and Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Royal Opera House. Pappano will also appear at the Salzburg Easter Festival with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in a residency including performances of Verdi’s Requiem, and a staging of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda.
