Sir Antonio Pappano

Chief Conductor Designate, London Symphony Orchestra (Chief Conductor from 2024/25)
Music Director, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Managed in association with Nicholas Mathias Ltd.

Biography

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.

Read more

Media

Recent News

Sir Antonio Pappano Named Musical America Conductor of the Year

Sir Antonio Pappano has been named Conductor of the Year at the 63rd Musical America Worldwide Awards. The Awards recognize classical music artists and leaders who made outstanding contributions to the performing arts. Musical America Worldwide publisher Stephanie...

Reviews

“The best thing about this show — indeed the best thing I’ve experienced in a theatre all season — is Antonio Pappano’s superlative conducting and his orchestra’s stunning playing of Wagner’s epic score. The Royal Opera should rename the opera “Die Meisterinstrumentalisten”, except it might not fit on posters. This is a musical interpretation of exemplary fluidity and pace, stirring in the right places (abetted by a rampant chorus), but also precise, subtle and virtuosic. After five hours and some, I wanted to hear it all again.”

Richard Morrison

The Times; March 2017

“Keeping the electricity at high voltage throughout is Antonio Pappano, whose conducting cuts boldly into Mussorgky’s rougher edges and eccentricities. Fired by incandescent orchestral playing, this is the sort of major artistic achievement that justifies subsidy for opera.”

Rupert Christiansen

The Telegraph

“Pappano succeeds in Bruckner where many of his colleagues fail: the fluidity with which he unfolds the musical argument and the supple flexibility of his phrasing. The tempi are kept well flowing, allowing the conductor to construct his interpretation over a convincing internal logic. The orchestra rewarded him with exemplary playing, both in the individual solo lines and in full ensemble. The imposing and majestic setting of Frauenkirche donated its own particular atmosphere… With these concerts, the pairing of Pappano and Santa Cecilia has proven itself as a major artistic brand of our time.”

Pierre-Jean Tribot

ResMusica

More Reviews

“Keeping the electricity at high voltage throughout is Antonio Pappano, whose conducting cuts boldly into Mussorgky’s rougher edges and eccentricities. Fired by incandescent orchestral playing, this is the sort of major artistic achievement that justifies subsidy for opera.”

Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph 

“Pappano succeeds in Bruckner where many of his colleagues fail: the fluidity with which he unfolds the musical argument and the supple flexibility of his phrasing. The tempi are kept well flowing, allowing the conductor to construct his interpretation over a convincing internal logic. The orchestra rewarded him with exemplary playing, both in the individual solo lines and in full ensemble. The imposing and majestic setting of Frauenkirche donated its own particular atmosphere… With these concerts, the pairing of Pappano and Santa Cecilia has proven itself as a major artistic brand of our time. “

Pierre-Jean Tribot, ResMusica 

“Pappano was incandescent, inspiring his orchestra and chorus to marvels of drama in the big scenes, yet also wondrously detailed, revealing textures in this masterly score of breathtaking transparency and delicacy. Aida in the theatre is rarely, if ever, like this.”

Hugh Canning, Sunday Times 

“With all three operas conducted by Antonio Pappano, who seems to have an almost mystical feel that always brings out the best in Verdi’s music, this all added up to a wondrous evening’s entertainment.”

William Hartston, Express 

“Sir Antonio Pappano and his ROH Orchestra were magnificient, a riveting account of the score, mind-boggling in its concentration given he has also found time during his run to tour Italy with the LSO and give two London concerts with it […] Verdi’s music runs hot through Pappano’s veins. (Don Carlo)”

Kevin Rogers, Classical Source 

“The orchestra, under Antonio Pappano, gives as fine an account of opera’s greatest score as I’ve ever heard, spinning long, long lines, so that the music flows in paragraphs, but with total consideration for the differing abilities and strengths of the singers. (Ring)”

Paul Levy, The Wall Street Journal 

“The Prom performance also confirmed what to me was obvious from the first, that Antonio Pappano is master of the work […] Pappano paced the whole work impeccably. (Les Troyens)”

David Cairns, Opera 

“Antonio Pappano’s conducting, meanwhile, is electric and eruptive throughout, yet wonderfully attentive to the needs of his singers, so that no one has to battle to be heard against the orchestra. Outstanding. (Otello)”

Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 

“This is Pappano’s Figaro, though. His attention to orchestral detail is quite magical and his deft harpsichord flourishes raise continuo-playing to an art form. I’ll go so far as to say that it is the best-conducted account of this opera I have yet heard.”

Mark Valencia, What’s On Stage 

“Antonio Pappano again and again demonstrated his impeccable Verdian credentials. (Simone Boccanegra)”

Roger Parker, Opera 

“An evening as much of Verdi’s music as the singing, driven (we are lucky to have him) by Antonio Pappano’s tremendous feel for drama in music as conductor. “

Adrian Hamilton, The Independent 

“Conductor Antonio Pappano ensured that musical values were genuinely high”

George Hall, The Guardian 

“The other great stars of the night were in the pit – the Royal Opera House Orchestra absolutely on fire under Antonio Pappano’s inspired direction. The music roared, swooned and sobbed in one unstoppable arch, so much so that the only real break for applause was after Tosca’s aria.”

Ditlev Rindom, Mundo Clasico