Biography

Conductor Roberto Abbado is equally well known for appearances in operatic and orchestral performances. His orchestral-conducting career has been especially successful in the U.S. Abbado was born in Milan, Italy, on December 30, 1954. His uncle is conductor Claudio Abbado, and his family includes several generations of musicians. Abbado studied conducting with Mario Gusella in Milan and then went on to the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, working there with Franco Ferrara. There, he was the first student ever asked to conduct the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He also studied piano and composition at the Milan Conservatory and rounded off his education with a summer course from Hans Swarowsky, the last one given by that celebrated figure, in Vienna in 1975. At 23, Abbado conducted a performance of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra in the city of Macerata, and in December of 1979, he made his debut at La Fenice in a new production of Rossini's Il Turco in Italia. Those appearances marked the beginning of a successful operatic career for Abbado around Europe and beyond, appearing at such major houses as La Scala in Milan, the Vienna State Opera, La Fenice, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He was the chief conductor of the Münchner Rundfunkorchester from 1988 to 1991 and has continued to work with that group. Abbado made his debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1994, but his U.S. activities were more oriented toward orchestral music; he has appeared with such groups as the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony. Abbado has also conducted orchestral music in Europe, making an early recording in 1992 with the Bamberger Symphoniker in a performance of Liszt piano concertos with Gerhard Oppitz. He led several opera recordings on the RCA label, including one of Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester in 2011. Since 2015, he has been joint music director with Fabio Biondi at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain, and in 2018, he became the music director of the Festival Verdi in Parma, Italy. Abbado has also recorded for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, and in the late 2010s and 2020s, Dynamic. On the latter label, he released the album Vive Verdi!: French Rarities and Discoveries, with the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, in 2022. ~ James Manheim, Rovi