Gianluca Capuano

Gianluca Capuano was awarded the Premio Abbiati as best conductor of the year in 2022. He has been chief conductor of Les Musiciens du Prince — Monaco since 2019. He studied organ, composition and conducting at the conservatory in his home city of Milan, and went on to specialize in early music at the Scuola Civica there. He also completed a degree in theoretical philosophy at the University of Milan.
As a soloist and conductor he has performed throughout Europe and in the USA, Russia and Japan. In 2006 he founded the instrumental and vocal ensemble Il Canto di Orfeo, dedicated to exploring a wide range of Baroque repertory, with which he works with some of the finest musicians and singers active in the field of historically informed performance practice. With his vocal ensemble he has also participated in Vacchi’s Teneke, Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart and Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten at La Scala, Milan.
In August 2016 Gianluca Capuano came to international attention when he stepped in at short notice to conduct Norma with Cecilia Bartoli on the opening night of the Edinburgh Festival. Bartoli then invited him to conduct further performances of Norma at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and in Baden-Baden.
Since then he has collaborated with Bartoli and Les Musiciens du Prince on numerous opera productions and concerts, among them La Cenerentola in Monte Carlo, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Versailles and Luxembourg, Ariodante, Le Comte Ory, Il turco in Italia, Alcina and Il barbiere di Siviglia in Monte Carlo, concert performances of La clemenza di Tito at the Lucerne Festival and on a European tour, and La Cenerentola, Il turco in Italia and a gala concert at the Vienna State Opera. At the Salzburg Festival since 2017 he has appeared with Bartoli and Les Musiciens du Prince in staged productions of Ariodante, Alcina, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Il barbiere di Siviglia and Orfeo ed Euridice, in concert performances of La donna del lago, La clemenza di Tito and Haydn’s L’anima del filosofo and in several concerts. In 2023 he conducted Les Musiciens du Prince in Monte Carlo and Salzburg in a marionette production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo.
Gianluca Capuano’s guest engagements have included appearances at the Vienna State Opera, where he has conducted Don Pasquale and Il barbiere di Siviglia, the Zurich Opera House, the Semperoper Dresden, the Hamburg State Opera, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Bavarian State Opera — most recently for a new production of Semele at the 2023 Munich Opera Festival. He has also worked regularly with Concerto Köln. He has appeared in symphonic repertory with orchestras including the orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna and the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg.
In addition to his performances at the Salzburg Festival, Gianluca Capuano’s engagements in the 2023/24 season include Orfeo ed Euridice at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, Giulio Cesare and Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem in Monte Carlo and Norma at the Bavarian State Opera. Future projects include La Cenerentola in a return to Munich and at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino; he will also conduct Rossini’s opera at La Scala, Milan, with members of the Accademia.