Symphony Concert N° 11

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.

Had it not been for Carl Maria von Weber, Dresden’s opera chorus would not have been founded, or at least not on October 8, 1817. It was Weber who obtained royal approval for this initiative; after all, it was his artistic mission (and personal ambition) to establish a German opera company alongside the tradition-steeped Italian opera. Besides suggesting other reforms for the staging of opera, he argued that it was now essential to have a regular choir. The choir started to participate in the traditional Palm Sunday concerts as early as 1827. Major landmarks in its history include the performances in 1846, 1847 and 1849 of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under the later Kapellmeister Richard Wagner, who was forced to flee Dresden shortly after the last-mentioned performance.

Currently comprising 89 singers, the Dresden State Opera Chorus has now become one of Europe’s finest opera choruses and has been acclaimed as such in virtually every premiere review in recent years. This preservation of tradition, coupled with a growing awareness of quality, is indebted to such artists as Joseph Metzner, Wilhelm Fischer, Karl Maria Pembaur, Ernst Hintze, Gerhart Wüstner, Franz Peter Müller-Sybel, Hans-Dieter Pflüger, Matthias Brauer and Pablo Assante, who have led the choir through difficult times to the present day. The Dresden State Opera Chorus is currently directed by Jörn Hinnerk Andresen, who since assuming his post in 2014 has maintained and developed such qualities as tonal coherence, refinement and reliably consistent precision.

The State Opera Chorus of today has to a significant degree been shaped by its collaboration with the conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli, who died far too early and dedicated much time and effort to developing the choir’s artistic potential. Nowadays, the choir frequently demonstrates its qualities in operatic productions and concert performances. Radio, television and CD recordings bear further testimony to the immense prowess on account of which the State Opera Chorus is much sought after in many places besides Dresden: the choir receives invitations to perform at festivals, on tours and in concerts and has since 2013 worked together with the Staatskapelle Dresden at the Salzburg Easter Festival, which has been directed by Christian Thielemann ever since. October 8, 2017 marks the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Dresden State Opera Chorus. 

The Semperoper Children’s Choir is an integral part of the opera company and can be frequently enjoyed in a wide range of pieces, including Puccini’s »La bohème« and »Tosca«, Humperdinck’s »Hansel and Gretel«, Strauss’s »Der Rosenkavalier« and Verdi’s »Otello«. Primary schoolchildren (from their second year) rehearse here regularly in the full choir as well as in smaller ensembles while receiving dedicated instruction in singing and stage performance.

The history of the Children’s Choir goes back to the 1950s. Initially, the ensemble was led by choral directors of the Dresden State Opera such as Ernst Hintze, Gerhard Wüstner and Franz-Peter Müller-Sybel. Werner Kitz and Werner Czerny were followed in 1994 by Andreas Heinze, who directed the choir for twenty years. Since 2014, the Children’s Choir has been led by Dresden choral director Claudia Sebastian-Bertsch.

In addition to

performances at the opera house, the choir is involved in Semper Zwei productions such as »Puss in Boots« by Caesar Cui or »Prinz Bussel« by Johannes Wulff-Woesten. The Children’s Choir of the Semperoper Dresden has also appeared several times in concert, such as in 2018 at the performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, conducted by Christian Thielemann. In addition to their demanding opera and concert programme, the children work together with their director on their own concert repertoire, consisting of folk song and madrigals, contemporary compositions as well as international songs. In the spring of 2019, a selection of this repertoire was recorded for CD release. In 2013, the Semperoper Children’s Choir was awarded the Semperoper Foundation Prize in recognition of its artistic achievements.