Enrico Calesso - conductor

 The much sought after conductor has worked with many leading orchestras including the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Orchestra of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Wiener Symphoniker, the Bruckner Orchester Linz, the Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice, the Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, the Münchner Symphoniker, the Berner Symphonie-Orchester, the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, the Orchestra Haydn of Bolzano and Trento, the Staatskapelle Schwerin, the Norddeutsche Philharmonie, the Jenaer Philharmonie and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie.

In addition to performances of Andrea Chenier at the Bregenz Festival in 2011 and 2012, Enrico Calesso’s much lauded work includes his debut at the Gran Teatro La Fenice di Venezia in 2016 with a double bill of Wolf-Ferrari’s Il segreto di Susanna and Roberto Hazon’s Agenzia Matrimoniale. This was followed by two series of performances of La Traviata in 2017 and 2018, a work with which he also gave his debuts at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (2018) and at the Oper Leipzig (2019).

The coming season will see Calesso return to La Fenice for a new production of Pierangelo Valtinoni’s opera Pinocchio and to the Landestheater Linz for a new production of Il trovatore having previously led there the new production of Don Giovanni in 2017.

His critically acclaimed opera work in Würzburg include recent performances of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung to mark the launch of the first Ring Cycle in the history of the Mainfranken Theater. This will continue with Das Rheingold in the coming season in which Calesso will also lead new productions Verdi’s Rigoletto and Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Highlights of his upcoming symphony concerts with the Philharmonisches Orchester Würzburg include Mahler’s third symphony, Strauss’ Burlesque and Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll.

His extensive operatic repertoire encompasses works such as Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin, Salome, Ariadne auf Naxos, Wozzeck, The Rake’s Progress, Madama Butterfly, La Bohéme, Carmen, Otello, Macbeth, La traviata, La sonnambula, L’Africaine, Les Huguenots, Les Vêpres siciliennes, Nixon in China as well as the central works of Mozart (Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Idomeneo, Die Zauberflöte) and Rossini (L’italiana in Algeri, Cenerentola, Il barbiere di Siviglia). Furthermore, his interest in baroque repertoire has led him to rediscover works such as Galuppi’s Alessandro nell’Indie and Cherubini’s Ifigenia in Aulide.

Enrico Calesso’s comprehensive concert repertoire spans many epochs. Having already conducted full cycles of the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms he is currently in the midst of performing the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler.

A graduate of the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello in Venice where he studied piano with Anna Colonna Romano, Enrico Calesso also holds an honours degree in Theoretical Philosophy from the Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice where he studied with Prof. Emanuele Severino. He subsequently went to Vienna to study conducting under Uroš Lajovic at the University of Music where he also graduated cum laude and was recipient of the Würdigungspreis.