Special Concert »Natur pur!« in the Kulturpalast

Daniele Gatti graduated as a composer and orchestra conductor at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan. He is Chief Conductor of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Music Director of the Orchestra Mozart and Artistic Advisor of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. From 2024 he will be Chief Conductor of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden.

He was Music Director of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and he previously held prestigious roles at important musical institutions like the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Royal Opera House of London, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. The Berliner Philharmoniker, the Wiener Philharmoniker, and the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala are just a few of the renowned symphonic institutions he works with.

Some of the numerous and important new productions he has conducted include Parsifal staged by Stefan Herheim opening the 2008 Bayreuther Festspiele (one of the very few Italian conductors to have been invited to the Wagnerian festival) and four operas at the Salzburger Festspiele (Elektra, La bohème, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Il Trovatore). He opened several seasons of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma: La Damnation de Faust (2017-2018), Rigoletto (2018-2019), Les Vêpres Siciliennes (2019-2020), Il barbiere di Siviglia (2020-2021) and the world premiere of

Battistelli’s Julius Caesar (2021-2022). In 2023, as part of the 85th Festival of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, he conducted Falstaff and all the symphonies by Tchaikovsky. In summer 2025 he will return to the Bayreuth Festival for the new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

Daniele Gatti was awarded the Premio “Franco Abbiati” from Italian music critics as best conductor in 2015, in 2016 he was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur from the French Republic for his work as Music Director of the Orchestre National de France and he was also awarded the Grand Officer of Merit of the Italian Republic.

Under Sony Classical he has recorded works by Debussy and Stravinsky with the Orchestre National de France, and a DVD of Wagner's Parsifal staged at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Under the label RCO Live he has recorded Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, several of Mahler’s Symphonies, a DVD of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps together with Debussy's Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un Faune and La Mer, a DVD of Strauss's Salome performed at the Dutch National Opera, a CD of Bruckner's Symphony n. 9 together with the Prelude and the Karfreitagszauber (Good Friday Music) from Wagner's Parsifal. In November 2019 a DVD of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, staged at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, was released by C Major.

Austrian baritone Markus Werba studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and the Music University of Klagenfurt. Between 1998 and 2000, he was part of the ensemble at the Vienna Volksoper. He has performed at various renowned venues including the Bavarian State Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Berlin State Opera, Teatro La Fenice, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Los Angeles Opera, Opera National de Paris, the Metropolitan Opera, Suntory Hall, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, and the Salzburg Festival.

This 2023/24 season, Markus will appear at the Semperoper Dresden in Le nozze di Figaro, and as Papageno in The Magic Flute and Ravel’s Heure Espagnole at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. Other appearances include the role of the music teacher in Ariadne auf Naxos at Teatro La Fenice in Venice. On the concert stage, he will perform a solo recital in Prague, Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony at La Scala and the Messa di Gloria with the RAI Orchestra in Turin.

Recent highlights include two new productions at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale in

Florence, where he appeared as the music teacher in Ariadne auf Naxos under the direction of Daniele Gatti and as Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus conducted by Zubin Mehta. He portrayed the role of Mercurio in La Calisto in a new production by David McVicar at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Additionally, he performed as Dottore Malatesta in Don Pasquale at the Royal Opera House in London and appeared as the title role in Eugene Onegin at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome.

Among his significant career successes are his interpretations of Papageno The Magic Flute in a global cinema broadcast by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as well as productions at the Royal Opera House and the Vienna State Opera. He also captivated audiences as Beckmesser in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at prestigious venues such as the Salzburg Festival, La Scala, the Met, and the Staatsoper unter den Linden, and portrayed Rodrigo in Verdi’s Don Carlo at the New National Theatre in Tokyo.