Fabio Luisi

Fabio Luisi has directed many of Europe's foremost orchestras and spent six seasons leading New York's Metropolitan Opera. By the early 2020s he served as principal conductor of ensembles in Dallas, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C.

He entered the world in Genoa, Italy, on January 17, 1959. Piano was his first instrument, and he received his diploma from the Paganini Conservatory in his hometown after studying with Memi Schiavina. In Paris he continued his training under Aldo Ciccolini and Antonio Bacchelli. Employment as accompanist to singer Leyla Gencer drew him toward conducting, so he relocated to Graz, Austria, for lessons with Milan Horvat. At the Graz Opera he moved from accompanying work into conducting assignments, making his formal debut there in 1984 and soon receiving guest invitations across Europe. In 1990 he established the Graz Symphony Orchestra and remained its music director until 1995.

Luisi entered the recording studio for the first time in 1992, directing a production of Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda for Berlin Classics with the Chor und Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin. From 1995 to 2000 he held the posts of chief conductor and artistic director with the Tonkünstler Orchestra in Vienna; between 1996 and 1999 he also shared the podium of the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, becoming sole chief conductor in 1999.

Several further opera recordings occupied him during the 1990s. His orchestral discography began after his appointment in 1997 as principal conductor of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, a post he occupied until 2002. The year 2000 brought an album of Honegger symphonies on the RSR label. He continued working with the MDR ensemble after leaving Dresden and captured performances of music by Mahler and Franz Schmidt. Named in 2004 as music director of both the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Semperoper, he assumed those responsibilities in 2007 yet resigned in 2010 when management scheduled the Staatskapelle Dresden for a German television broadcast under Christian Thielemann without consulting him. He turned instead to the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, where he had already become chief conductor in 2005, and to steadily increasing American engagements that included his Metropolitan Opera debut that same year. In 2010 he joined the company as principal guest conductor and rose to principal conductor the next year after James Levine's illness; he retained the title until 2017.

The Danish National Symphony Orchestra appointed him principal conductor in 2013, and the contract was later extended through 2026. Following several guest appearances he was named music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2020, with the agreement prolonged through 2029. In 2022 he also took the helm of Japan's NHK Symphony Orchestra. He has continued to record with many of the orchestras he has led, and by the early 2020s his catalog surpassed sixty releases, among them a 2022 album with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra presenting Carl Nielsen's Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5.