Orchestra

The Carlo Felice Theatre Foundation Orchestra traces its history back to the early 20th century. Its symphonic and operatic activities, which not even the air raids of 1943 – which destroyed the historic Carlo Felice Theatre – managed to interrupt, have continued uninterrupted ever since.

In 1965, the Orchestra took on an organic structure, and evolved by developing a repertoire that ranges from the XVII century to contemporary music, standing out in the national institutional scene and distinguishing itself for both its productivity and versatility.

Since 1950, internationally renowned conductors have alternated on the podium: Victor De Sabata, Tullio Serafin, Igor Stravinsky, Franco Capuana, Vittorio Gui, Sergiu Celibidache, Hermann Scherchen, Sir John Barbirolli, Claudio Abbado, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, Carlo Maria Giulini, Riccardo Muti, Georges Prêtre, Mstislav Rostropovič, Giuseppe Patanè, Vladimir Delman, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Spiros Argiris, Peter Maag, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Myung-Whun Chung, Yury Aronovič. More recently, Daniel Oren (Principal conductor of the Orchestra in the second half of the 1980s and from 2007 to 2010), Antonio Pappano, Christian Thielemann, Daniele Gatti, Gary Bertini, Gennadij Roždestvenskij, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Rudolf Baršaj, Bruno Campanella , Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Nello Santi, Michel Plasson (Principal Guest Conductor of the ensemble in the early 2000s), Bruno Bartoletti, Sir Neville Marriner, Lu Jia, Juanjo Mena (Principal Guest Conductor of the ensemble from 2007 to 2010), Dmitrij Kitajenko, Manfred Honeck, Juraj Valčuha, Kyrill Petrenko, Hartmut Haenchen, Vladimir Fedoseev, Andrea Battistoni (Principal Guest Conductor from 2013 to 2016), Daniel Smith (Principal Guest Conductor from 2017 to 2019).

From the 2020-2021 season, Fabio Luisi (Honorary conductor since 2012) has been the protagonist of numerous concerts dedicated to the great European Romantic symphonic repertoire – with a specific focus to the composer Anton Bruckner – whose work has been intertwined by Luisi with a exploratory journey of Luciano Berio’s symphonic work since 2022 (considering the centennial birth anniversary of the composer from Oneglia, which will be celebrated in 2025).

In 2021, Donato Renzetti (Director Emeritus since 2022) conducted the first modern performance of Bianca e Fernando by Vincenzo Bellini in the version of “Genova, 1828”, as part of a larger project for the rediscovery of Genoese musical civilization promoted by the Theatre. From the 2020-2021 season, as a regular guest of the Theatre, he has conducted numerous concerts dedicated to the discovery of European musical forms from the XX century.

The Carlo Felice Theatre Foundation Orchestra has made numerous recordings, particularly of opera productions, for labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, Sony, TDK, Rai-Trade, Nuova Era Records, Arthaus Musik, Dynamic, Bongiovanni, Denon/Nippon Columbia and BMG-Ricordi.

Such an high artistic level has been consolidated over the years, allowing the Theatre to take part in very prestigious events such as the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto (2013, 2020), the Ravello Festival (2014, 2019) and the Festival di musica sacra Anima Mundi di Pisa (2015), and to perform in important national and international venues such as the Parco della Musica in Rome (2015), the Teatro degli Arcimboldi in Milan (2012), the Auditorium della Conciliazione in Rome (2012), the Teatro dal Verme in Milan (2014, 2019, 2021) the Royal Opera House of Muscat (2015, 2017, 2019) the Astana Opera (2017), the Marinsky Concert Hall (2019), the Basilica di S. Francesco d’Assisi for the Christmas Concert of 2020, broadcast in Eurovision by RAI.

Latest update: June 2022