Giuseppe Sinopoli

Giuseppe Sinopoli ranked among the era’s leading conductors, celebrated for delivering performances of psychological depth and expressionist force that often ignited sharp disagreement. He first took up harmony and organ at age twelve in Messina and then studied harmony and counterpoint at the Venice Conservatory from 1965 to 1967. Between 1969 and 1973 he worked at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena under Franco Donatoni. In 1972 he received a doctorate in medicine with a psychiatry specialty and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Padua; his dissertation examined the brain regions responsible for auditory sensation.

In 1975 he established the Bruno Maderna Ensemble, an ensemble devoted to avant-garde repertoire, while he continued to teach and to compose. His own music, characteristically intense and shaped by the serial practices then current, attracted several important commissions. The largest of these was the opera Lou Salomé, drawn from the life of a nineteenth-century literary figure, which received its premiere at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1981.

Venice saw his widely praised accounts of Verdi’s Aïda and Macbeth in 1976 and 1977; he later conducted Macbeth at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Attila at the Vienna State Opera. Sinopoli made his London operatic debut with Puccini’s Manon Lescaut at Covent Garden in 1983 and his New York debut with Puccini’s Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in 1985. As an opera conductor he became especially identified with electrifying performances of Richard Strauss’s Salome and Elektra.

From 1990 until his death he served as director of the Taormina Arte Festival in Sicily. He held the post of principal conductor of the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome until 1987 and, beginning in 1984, became principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, a title he retained until 1994, when the position was elevated to music director, which he kept until the same year. Between 1992 and 2001 he was principal conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden.

Sinopoli recorded exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon. His edition of Maderna’s works received the Grand Prix International du Disque and the Premio della Critica Discografia Italiana in 1981. The Manon Lescaut recording earned both prizes plus the International Record Critics Award in 1985. Further honors included a Gramophone Award for La forza del destino in 1987, the Tokyo Record Academy Prize and Stella d’Oro for Madama Butterfly, three awards for Tannhäuser, and three for Tosca. His most decorated release was Strauss’s Salome, which won the Orphee d’Or, the Stella d’Argento, the Grand Prix de la Nouvelle Académie du Disque, and the Edison Award. In 1994 the Italian government bestowed its highest civilian honor, the Gran Croce al Merito, for his contributions to the arts and to music. Sinopoli died of a heart attack at the Deutsche Oper Berlin while conducting the third act of Aïda.