Gianluca Martinenghi

Bio: Gianluca Martinenghi studied piano with Piero Rattalino and composition with Bruno Bettinelli. He began studying conducting with Donato Renzetti and Giacomo Zani, collaborating for the direction of youth orchestras. He also began to develop his career as a musicologist, writing essays specifically about the piano for magazines such as Musica, Symphonia and Piano Time. At the same time he embarked on a career in the theatre, beginning at Teatro Regio di Torino where he worked as head of music, which enabled him to familiarise himself with the operatic repertory, assisting highly respected musicians such as Gianandrea Gavazzeni and Yuri Ahronovitch. Then for several years he worked at Teatro Massimo di Palermo, holding senior positions from 1997 onwards in the realm of artistic direction and general management of the theatre. With the orchestra of Teatro Massimo di Palermo he conducted many symphony concerts and important 20th Century productions, including Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde, also recorded for CD, Pollicino by Hans Werner Henze and Una Favola Per Caso by Nello Sani and Lucio Gregoretti. He was also assistant and coach for prestigious concerts alongside such distinguished musicians as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Rudolf Barshai and Bruno Campanella. In addition to his appearances with Teatro Massimo di Palermo, he has conducted at many other important theatres, including Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Arena di Verona, Teatro Bellini di Catania, Deutsche Opera Berlin, Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Teatro Petruzzelli di Bari, Teatro Donizetti di Bergamo, Teatro Pavarotti di Modena, Teatro Comunale di Ferrara, Opera Ireland, National Theatre of Opera and Ballet of Tirana, Palm Beach Opera, Teatro Goldoni di Livorno, Teatro Verdi di Pisa, Slovenian National Theatre of Maribor, Macedonian National Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Teatro Verdi di Salerno, Croatian National Theatre and Theater Lübeck, combinging operatice worth with symphony concerts with such orchestras as L’Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, L’Orchestra Regionale dell’Abruzzo, the Orchestra Sinfonica of Malaga, the Orchestra Sinfonica of the Balearic Islands, the Orchestra Sinfonica of the City of Murcia, the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, Symphonic Orchestra of Laval, l'Orchestra Sinfonica di Campinas, l'Orchestra Sinfonica of Tenerife, L’Orchestra Toscanini di Parma, Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra, Maribor Symphony Orchestra, l' Ochestra Sinfonica di Macerata, l'Orchestra Festival Puccini di Torre del Lago, the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, L'Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Orchestre Philarmonique de Montecarlo, National Hungarian Filarmomic Orchestra. Among his most significant performances are Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi at Teatro Massimo di Palermo, Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Il Campanello and La Figlia del Reggimento at Teatro Donizetti di Bergamo, Verdi’s La Traviata and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana at Teatro Bellini di Catania and Bellini’s La Sonnambula at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. He received great critical acclaim from both public and press for his interpretation of Verdi’s Otello in a tour of some of the more important of Italy’s “Teatri di Tradizione” in the 2006/7 season and the following year he enjoyed a similar success with another such tour of Giordano’s Andrea Chenier. In May 2007 he made his successful debut with Opera Ireland, conducting Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, returning to the company to conduct Tosca in 2010. He received excellent reviews for the CD recordings of Puccini and Verdi Arias and Verdi Duets with the soprano Amarilli Nizza and Roberto Frontali. He recorded also CD with Orchestra dell'Arena di Verona for EMI for a tribute to Enrico Caruso. He made his debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin with Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, enjoyed considerable success with his debut at the Arena di Verona conducting Verdi’s La Traviata and at the Avenches Opera Festival with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. His tour of Modena, Ferrara and Piacenza with the L’Orchestra Toscanini was also very well received and for two years running he took part in the inauguration of the Tenerife Festival with Verd’s Falstaff and Puccini’s Tosca and was appointed to the post of principal guest conductor to the festival by the director, Giancarlo Del Monaco. He took part in the highly considered project of the Compagnia di Opera Brasiliana conducting Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia and made his USA debut with Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte at Palm Beach Opera. Other important debuts have been at Teatro Petruzzelli di Bari with a concert in the Symphonic Season. In 2012 he conducted two of the most important international orchestras: Münchner Rundfunkorchester and L'Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and was invited to conduct the rarely performed Iris by Mascagni for the Fondazione Arena di Verona (which previously had only been conducted at Verona by Mascagni himself) achieving considerable success from both press and public alike. In the last few years he conducted at Festival of Dubrovnik and in NCPA of Beijing and he inaugurated the Taormina Festival with Rigoletto (broadcasted worldwide) in 2013 and in 2014 he inaugurated with Aida and the Orchestra of Teatro Bellini di Catania the Siracusa Festival. In 2015 he won the price of critic with Slovenian National Theatre for Dialogues Des Carmelites. Recently he debuted with National Hungarian Filarmonic Orchestra in a Gala with Diana Damrau.From 2016 he is Chief Conductor of the Macedonian National Theatre Last update: 2017-02-09 16:24:35 +01:00