Gianluca Capuano studierte Orgel, Komposition und Orchesterleitung am Konservatorium seiner Heimatstadt Mailand sowie historische Aufführungspraxis an der Civica Scuola di Musica ebenfalls in Mailand. 2015 debütierte er an der Semperoper Dresden mit Händels Orlando, 2016 am Opernhaus Zürich mit Haydns Orlando paladino. Ebenfalls 2016 dirigierte er Norma mit Cecilia Bartoli in der Titelrolle zur Eröffnung des Edinburgh Festival, gefolgt von Aufführungen in Paris und Baden-Baden. 2017 erfolgte eine Europatournee von La Cenerentola mit Cecilia Bartoli. In jüngerer Zeit dirigierte er u.a. Ariodante, La donna del lago, Il barbiere di Siviglia und Alcina bei den Salzburger Festspielen, Händels Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno an der Oper Köln, das Weihnachtsoratorium an der Staatsoper Hamburg, Orfeo ed Euridice am Teatro dell’Opera in Rom, Il matrimonio segreto in Amsterdam, Mozarts Requiem in Bari, L’elisir d’amore am Teatro Real in Madrid sowie La finta giardiniera, La Cenerentola und Iphigénie en Tauride in Zürich. In der Spielzeit 2021/22 dirigierte er Le nozze di Figaro am Bolschoi-Theater in Moskau, Il turco in Italia an der Bayerischen Staatsoper, L’italiana in Algeri in Zürich und L’elisir d’amore in Hamburg, 2022/23 u.a. Alceste in Rom und Florenz sowie L’elisir d’amore an der Wiener Staatsoper. Seit 2019 ist er Chefdirigent von Les Musiciens du Prince – Monaco, mit denen er ein Manuel García gewidmetes Album mit Javier Camarena aufnahm sowie eine CD mit Varduhi Abrahamyan. Als Forscher widmet sich Gianluca Capuano, der auch ein Studium der Theoretischen Philosophie absolviert hat, hauptsächlich der Musikästhetik.
15. June 2025
From baroque to bel canto: works by Handel, Mozart, Rossini and others.
Gianluca Capuano
Ernst Raffelsberger
Ernst Raffelsberger comes from Gmunden, Upper Austria. He studied music education and church music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, as well as choral conducting at the Salzburg Mozarteum. From 1983 to 1986, he was Kapellmeister of the Vienna Boys’ Choir. During this time, he led the ensemble in Vienna and on tours throughout Europe, South Africa, Canada, and the USA. Starting in 1986, Ernst Raffelsberger served as Chorus Director and Kapellmeister at the Landestheater Salzburg (participating in the Salzburg Mozart Week and the Salzburg Festival). In 1989, he moved to the theater in Freiburg im Breisgau as Chorus Director and Kapellmeister. Since autumn 1993, Ernst Raffelsberger has been engaged as Chorus Director at the Zurich Opera House. By now, he has overseen around 150 premieres and countless revivals, collaborating with many renowned conductors such as Marco Armiliato, Riccardo Chailly, Teodor Currentzis, Christoph von Dohnányi, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Daniele Gatti, Bernard Haitink, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Zubin Mehta, Gianandrea Noseda, and Franz Welser-Möst. Guest performances with the Zurich Opera House have taken him to Vienna, London, Paris, and Tokyo. Beginning in the summer of 2012, he additionally started a 10-year tenure as Chorus Director of the Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus at the Salzburg Festival. Here, he successfully collaborated with, among others, Riccardo Muti, Mariss Jansons, and Sir Simon Rattle. After concluding this work with the 2021 festival summer, he has once again been responsible—since 2025 and at the request of Maestro Muti—for the choral preparation for his festival concerts in Salzburg.
Numerous CD and DVD recordings document his work in both Zurich and Salzburg.
Cast
mit Sängerinnen und Sänger des Internationalen Opernstudios
Cecilia Bartoli
Cecilia Bartoli has established herself over the course of a magnificent stage career spanning more than 30 years as one of the world’s leading classical musicians. Born in Rome and trained by her mother, the vocal coach Silvana Bazzoni, Cecilia Bartoli was discovered by Daniel Barenboim, Herbert von Karajan, and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. She soon began performing with other leading conductors and major orchestras in all the great opera houses and concert halls of North America, Europe, the Far East, and Australia, as well as at renowned festivals. Her artistic signature has become innovative projects dedicated to neglected music, which have resulted in extensive concert tours, best-selling recordings, spectacular stage productions, groundbreaking film formats, and multimedia events. Since 2012, Cecilia Bartoli has been Artistic Director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival; as of early 2023, she also serves as Director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo – the first woman in the history of the house to hold this position. Also in Monte-Carlo, Les Musiciens du Prince – Monaco was founded in 2016 under the patronage of H.S.H. Prince Albert II and H.R.H. Princess Caroline of Hanover: with this orchestra, which performs on historical instruments, Cecilia Bartoli appears both in Monte-Carlo and on major tours throughout Europe. Milestones in her career include the very first staging of Rossini’s La Cenerentola at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1997, the legendary Vivaldi album released in 1999, which has sold millions of copies, the Paris concert marathon in 2008 marking the 200th anniversary of Maria Malibran’s birth, her radically new interpretation of Bellini’s Norma in 2013 – which also resulted in a scholarly edition of the reconstructed original score – as well as a celebrated Rossini Week at the Vienna State Opera in 2022. The Cecilia Bartoli – Music Foundation was established as part of her philanthropic work. Among other projects, the foundation created a new label in collaboration with Decca, mentored by Bartoli. Thanks to this initiative, artists such as Javier Camarena and Varduhi Abrahamyan were given the opportunity to record a studio album for the first time. Numerous orders of merit and honorary doctorates, five Grammy Awards, over a dozen ECHO Klassik and BRIT Awards, the Polar Music Prize, the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize, and many other honors underscore Cecilia Bartoli’s significance in the world of culture and music. In this context, Europa Nostra appointed Cecilia Bartoli as its president, a role she assumed in 2022 for an initial five-year term.