Gianluca Capuano

Biography

Gianluca Capuano has been principal conductor of Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco since 2019. He studied the organ, composition and conducting at the Conservatory in his hometown of Milan and went on to specialize in early music at the city’s Scuola Civica. He also studied theoretical philosophy at the University of Milan. He has appeared as a soloist and as a conductor throughout Europe, the United States, Russia and Japan. In 2006 he founded Il canto di Orfeo, an instrumental and vocal ensemble with which he performs a wide-ranging Baroque repertoire, working with some of the finest musicians and singers active in the field of historically-informed performance practice. With his vocal en-semble he has also taken part in perform-ances of Vacchi’s Teneke, Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart and Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten at La Scala, Milan.

Gianluca Capuano came to international attention in August 2016, when he stepped in at short notice to conduct Norma with Cecilia Bartoli on the opening night of the Edinburgh Festival. Bartoli then invited him to conduct further performances of Norma at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and in Baden-Baden as well as a European tour of La Cenerentola with Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco. He has also conducted Hasse’s Leucippo, Vivaldi’s Catone in Utica with Concerto Köln and Gassmann’s Gli uccellatori at the Cologne Opera, Handel’s Orlando at the Dresden Semperoper, Così fan tutte for OperaLombardia, Idomeneo at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, a new production of La clemenza di Tito in Karlsruhe, a new production of L’incoronazione di Poppea in Nantes, Donizetti’s Pigmalione in a double bill with Mayr’s Che originali! at the Donizetti Festival in Bergamo, Spontini’s Le metamorfosi di Pasquale at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and La finta giardiniera at the Zurich Opera.

Gianluca Capuano made his Salzburg debut at the 2017 Whitsun Festival, conducting Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco in Ariodante and a concert performance of La donna del lago, following this up in 2018 with a recital of arias associated with the legendary tenor Manuel García and sung by Javier Camarena. Highlights from this programme were released on CD. He returned in 2019 for Alcina and, with Il canto di Orfeo, Caldara’s oratorio La morte d’Abel and in 2020 for a Mozart matinee with the Mozarteum Orchestra. Other recent engagements have included Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto and Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno for the Cologne Opera, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio for the Hamburg State Opera, Ariodante in Monte Carlo, Orfeo ed Euridice for the Rome Opera, Il matrimonio segreto for the Dutch National Opera, Guillaume Tell at the Chorégies d’Orange, Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Mozart’s Requiem in Bari, L’elisir d’amore at the Teatro Real in Madrid, La Cenerentola and Iphigénie en Tauride in Zurich and, in January 2021, Cimarosa’s Il maestro di cappella in a double bill with Wolf-Ferrari’s Il segreto di Susanna at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa. On the concert platform he has recently conducted the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna in a programme of works by Schubert and Anton Eberl.

His second CD for Decca, an album devoted to the legendary Pauline Viardot and showcasing the mezzosoprano Varduhi Abrahamyan and Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco was released april, 2021.