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.

The Dresden Opera Chorus was founded on 8 October 1817 by royal proclamation. The issuing of this decree by Frederick Augustus I of Saxony can be largely attributed to the efforts of the recently engaged court Kapellmeister, Carl Maria von Weber, who was commissioned in that year to establish a German opera company to complement the Italian opera long performed in Dresden. Weber demanded the establishment of a »permanent theatre choir« able to meet the rising demands of the new opera repertoire.

Over the following decades and centuries, the Saxon State Opera Chorus developed into a first-class and highly sought-after ensemble thanks to the many outstanding figures who maintained its operatic roots while carefully nurturing its artistic development. The list of former directors includes Joseph Metzner, Wilhelm Fischer, Karl Maria Pembaur, Ernst Hintze, Gerhart Wüstner, Hans Peter Müller-Sybel, Hans-Dieter Pflüger and Matthias Brauer. They all cultivated the unique sound of the State Opera Chorus, a quality particularly influenced by the ensemble’s active concert schedule. An homogeneous and elegant tone, sensitive piano singing infused with a dense and rich timbre, these are the essential characteristics of the State Opera Chorus.

Today the Saxon State Opera Chorus is regarded as one of Europe’s leading classical choirs. Its appearances on the operatic stage, its participation in concerts and radio, television or CD productions as well as its regular performances at festivals and on tour have earned it international recognition and the highest accolades.

Of particular significance was the collaboration with the conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli, who viewed the ensemble as still possessing untapped reserves. In numerous CD productions, the chorus time and again reached new artistic heights, which were consolidated in the years after Sinopoli’s sudden death by constant work.

As in all artistic endeavours of the Saxon State Opera in Dresden, the State Opera Chorus combines a strong sense of tradition and contemporary artistic responsibility with a desire to meet future challenges.

On 8 October 2017, the Saxon State Opera Chorus celebrated its 200th anniversary.

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.