Nicola Luisotti
Nicola Luisotti
Nicola Luisotti has been appointed music director of San Francisco Opera effective at the start of the 2009-10 season. The appointment was announced on January 9 by San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley and Chairman Franklin P. Johnson in the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. Maestro Luisotti will conduct a minimum of four productions each season and spend the summer and fall opera periods working with the Company. Before he officially begins his tenure, Luisotti will serve as music director designate, working with the general director, administrative staff, board of directors, orchestra, and chorus to ensure a smooth transition in programming and casting for future seasons. Maestro Luisotti, who made his San Francisco Opera debut with Verdi’s La Forza del Destino in November of 2005, will make his next conducting appearances with San Francisco Opera in the fall of 2008. Luisotti succeeds Donald Runnicles, who will leave his position of music director and principal conductor at the close of the 2008-09 season.
Italian conductor Nicola Luisotti made his international debut in 2002 leading a new production of Il Trovatore at the Stuttgart State Theater. His career trajectory since then can only be described as meteoric, with debuts in all the world’s major opera houses either accomplished or scheduled by the time of his January 2007 appointment as music director designate of San Francisco Opera.
Born in the Tuscan village of Viareggio and raised nearby, Luisotti began studying music as a child, with lessons on the church organ; by age eleven he was the director of the church choir. He later trained as a pianist, with secondary degrees in composition, trumpet and voice. Upon completing his formal study, Luisotti’s first professional years were prescient of his future: He traveled between Milan, where he was a rehearsal pianist for La Scala, and Florence, where he was a member of the chorus of the Maggio Musicale. Subsequent posts allowed him to assist such conductors as Lorin Maazel and Riccardo Muti at La Scala. His earliest full-time position was as chorus master for La Fenice in Venice.
Luisotti’s debut in Stuttgart was met with ecstatic critical acclaim, and within weeks he was offered a debut engagement at Paris Opera. Other early invitations came from the Canadian Opera Company (Un Ballo in Maschera in 2003), Genoa’s Teatro Carlo Felice (Il Viaggio a Reims in 2003 and Simon Boccanegra in 2004), and Munich’s Bavarian State Opera (Tosca in 2004). He made his debut in Japan with a staged production of Tosca at Suntory Hall and has established growing relationships with the orchestras of Zagreb, Sofia, Genoa, Tokyo’s NHK Symphony, Munich’s Bavarian Rundfunk Orchestra, and Rome’s Santa Cecilia Orchestra.
The triumphs of Un Ballo in Maschera in Toronto and La Traviata in Paris led to the series of debuts that have filled Luisotti’s recent calendar and will occupy him in the immediate future. In North America he has led productions of Pagliacci and Carmen for the Los Angeles Opera and Macbeth for Seattle Opera, leading to his October 2006 debut at The Metropolitan Opera with Tosca. In Europe he makes his debut later this month at the Royal Opera Covent Garden (Il Trovatore and Madama Butterfly), followed by debuts at Vienna State Opera (Simon Boccanegra) and Madrid’s Teatro Real (Il Trovatore).
January 2007