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The Italian conductor, Gianluca Capuano, 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 graduated with honors in theoretical philosophy from the University of Milan.
Gianluca Capuano specialized in early music as well as historically informed performance practice from early in his career and has appeared as a conductor, organist, and continuo player throughout Europe, the USA, Russia, and Japan. He has collaborated with such artists as Michael Chance, Emma Kirkby, Cecilia Bartoli, Max Emanuel Cencic, Philippe Jaroussky, Diego Fasolis, and Lorenzo Ghielmi and Vittorio Ghielmi.
In 2006 Gianluca Capuano 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 ensemble he has performed at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, presenting Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart in 2013 and participating in a production of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten in 2015.
Gianluca Capuano came to international attention in August 2016, when he stepped in at short notice to conduct Bellini’s Norma with Cecilia Bartoli on the opening night of the Edinburgh Festival. Cecilia Bartoli
then invited him to conduct further performances of Norma at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden as well as a European tour of La Cenerentola with Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco. This collaboration was continued at the Salzburg Festival, where he has conducted the Musiciens du Prince-Monaco in works by George Frideric Handel, Rossini, and W.A. Mozart since 2017. He has also conducted Johann Adolf Hasse's Leucippo, Antonio Vivaldi’s Catone in Utica and Leonardo Vinci’s Artaserse with Concerto Köln and Gassmann’s Gli uccellatori at the Cologne Opera, G.F. Handel's Orlando at the Dresden Semperoper, W.A. Mozart's Così fan tutte for OperaLombardia, Idomeneo at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, W.A. Mozart's La clemenza di Tito in Karlsruhe, L’incoronazione di Poppea in Nantes, Donizetti’s Pigmalione in a double bill with Mayr’s Che originali! at the Donizetti Festival in Bergamo, and Spontini’s Le metamorfosi di Pasquale at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. He enjoys a regular association with Zürich Opera, where he has conducted productions of Haydn’s Orlando paladino, W.A. Mozart's La finta giardiniera, Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, and Rossini’s L'italiana in Algeri.
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 G.F. Handel's Alcina and, with Il canto di Orfeo, Antonio Caldara's oratorio La morte d’Abel, in 2020 for a W.A. Mozart Matinee with the Mozarteum Orchestra, and in 2021 for G.F. Handel's Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno and a concert performance of W.A. Mozart's La clemenza di Tito. He made Lucerne Festival debut in September 2018 conducting the Musiciens du Prince-Monaco in Rossini’s La Cenerentola. He has served as Principal Conductor of this ensemble since 2019.
During the 2021-2022 season Gianluca Capuano conducted W.A. Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Bolshoi in Moscow, Il turco in Italia at the Bavarian Staatsoper, L’italiana in Algeri in Zürich and L’elisir d’amore in Hamburg and La Cenerentola at the Wiener Staatsoper. In the fall of 2022, he will bring Gluck’s Alceste to the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. Other recent engagements have included Il matrimonio segreto and Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno in Cologne, a choreographed version of J.S. Bach's Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248) in Hamburg, Ariodante in Monte Carlo, Orfeo ed Euridice at the Rome Opera, Il matrimonio segreto at the Dutch National Opera, Guillaume Tell at the Chorégies d’Orange, Il barbiere di Siviglia in Palermo, W.A. Mozart's Requiem in Bari, L’elisir d’amore at the Teatro Real in Madrid, La Cenerentola and Iphigénie en Tauride in Zürich, Cimarosa’s Il maestro di cappella in a double bill with Wolf-Ferrari’s Il segreto di Susanna in Genoa, Ariodante at the Bolshoi and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's Stabat Mater at the 2021 Lucerne Festival.
Capuano’s recordings include an album of arias with tenor Javier Camarena with Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco. His second CD for Decca, an album devoted to the legendary Pauline Viardot and showcasing the mezzo-soprano Varduhi Abrahamyan and Les Musiciens du Prince - Monaco, was released in April 2021. |
