Italian conductor Daniele Gatti, who was born in 1961 in Milan, studied piano, violin, composition, and conducting at the Conservatory of his hometown and made his debut at La Scala in Milan as a conductor when he was 27. Engagements soon followed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Gatti’s first leadership position came in 1992 as Music Director of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome; between 1994 and 1997 he was additionally engaged as Principal Guest Conductor at the Royal Opera House in London. There he took over leadership of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1996, holding that position until 2009, after which he was named Honorary Conductor. In 1997 Gatti began a ten-year tenure as General Music Director of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and in 2009 he took up the same position at Zurich Opera. Additionally, since 2008 he has led the Orchestre National de France as Principal Conductor. Gatti regularly guest conducts many of the top orchestras, including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics; the Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras; the Berlin Philharmonic; and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He has an especially close relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Staatsoper; this collaboration also entails numerous appearances at the Salzburg Festival, where he conducted Strauss’s Elektra in 2010 and, in 2012, Puccini’s La Bohème. Every summer from 2008 to 2011, Gatti has led Wagner’s Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival. He last appeared at La Scala in Milan conducting Wozzeck, Don Carlo, and Lulu, and at the Bavarian Staatsoper in Munich he has presided over new productions of Aida and Fidelio.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 12 September 2005 in a concert leading the Vienna Philharmonic in works by Strauss, Mahler, and Wagner.
May 2012