This season, Maestro Luisotti conducts mainstage productions Aida, The Marriage of Figaro and Madama Butterfly.

Getting to Know Maestro Luisotti

Nicola Luisotti photo gallery

Italian conductor Nicola Luisotti, music director of San Francisco Opera and principal guest conductor of the Tokyo Symphony, 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 engagements in the world’s major opera houses and concert halls.

            Maestro Luisotti made his San Francisco Opera debut in 2005 conducting La Forza del Destino and, following the announcement of his appointment as music director in 2007, he returned to the Company in November 2008 for critically acclaimed performances of La Bohème. In his inaugural season as music director, Luisotti conducts Il Trovatore, Salome, Otello, and La Fanciulla del West.

            He has garnered enthusiastic praise from both audiences and critics for his work at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden (Turandot, Madama Butterfly, Il Trovatore); the Metropolitan Opera (La Bohème, Tosca); Paris Opera (La Traviata, Tosca); the Vienna State Opera (Simon Boccanegra); Genoa’s Teatro Carlo Felice (Un Ballo in Maschera, La Fanciulla del West, La Traviata, Simon Boccanegra, Il Viaggio a Reims); Venice’s La Fenice (Madama Butterfly); Munich’s Bavarian State Opera (Macbeth, Tosca); Frankfurt Opera (Il Trittico); Madrid’s Teatro Real (Il Trovatore, La Damnation de Faust); Los Angeles Opera (Carmen, Pagliacci); Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company (Un Ballo in Maschera); Seattle Opera (Macbeth); and in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall (Turandot, Tosca, La Bohème, and Don Giovanni). Upcoming opera engagements include Salome at Bologna’s Teatro Comunale, Così fan tutte in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, and Aida at the Royal Opera. In future seasons, he returns to the podium at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala and the Metropolitan Opera, among others.

            Equally at home on the concert stage, Maestro Luisotti has established growing relationships with the orchestras of Tokyo (NHK Symphony, Tokyo Symphony), London (Philharmonia Orchestra), Genoa, Budapest, Munich (Bavarian Radio Orchestra), Rome (Santa Cecilia Orchestra), Zagreb, Sofia, and Hamburg. In conjunction with the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, Luisotti led special concerts in Beijing featuring artists Renée Fleming, Sumi Jo, Ramón Vargas, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. He made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic conducting Dvorák’s Requiem in December 2007 and will return to lead the orchestra in future seasons. Luisotti recently made successful debuts with the orchestras of San Francisco, London, and Atlanta, and his upcoming orchestral engagements include concerts with orchestras of Milan, Turin, and Frankfurt.

            The conductor’s expanding discography includes a complete recording of Stiffellio (Dynamic) with the orchestra of Trieste’s Teatro Verdi and the critically acclaimed Duets (Deutsche Grammophon), featuring Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón. He is also on the podium of a DVD recording of the Met’s recent La Bohème, starring Angela Gheorghiu and Ramón Vargas (EMI).

            Born in the Tuscan city 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. Following completion of his formal study, Luisotti’s first professional years were spent working in Milan, where he was a rehearsal pianist for La Scala, and in Florence, where he served as a member of the chorus of the Maggio Musicale Festival. His earliest full-time position was as chorus master for La Fenice in Venice.