Antonello Manacorda

Antonello Manacorda was born into an Italian-French family in Turin and received his musical training in Amsterdam. He was a founding member and long-time concert master in Claudio Abbado’s Mahler Chamber Orchestra, before studying conducting under the legendary Finnish teacher Jorma Panula. Today he appears regularly at the world’s leading opera houses and with major symphony orchestras. Since 2010 he has been the artistic director of the Kammerakademie Potsdam, with which ensemble he has released a series of award-winning CDs.

Opera conducting engagements in the 2024/25 season have taken Antonello Manacorda to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, for Les Contes d’Hoffmann, to the Zurich Opera House for Le nozze di Figaro and to the Paris Opéra for Pelléas et Mélisande. Maria Stuarda marks his debut conducting an opera production at the Salzburg Festival, following his concert debut there with a Mozart matinee in 2021.

In symphonic repertory during the 2024/25 season, he has conducted performances with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. With the Kammerakademie Potsdam, he has conducted concert performances of Weber’s Der Freischütz in Potsdam, and at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus and the Berlin Philharmonie.

In recent seasons, Antonello Manacorda has worked with orchestras including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the SWR Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra. Recent acclaimed opera appearances have included his debut at the Metropolitan Opera with Le nozze di Figaro, a new production of Der Freischütz at the Bavarian State Opera, his debut at the Semperoper Dresden, again with Der Freischütz, a new production of Carmen at Covent Garden and a new production of Il trovatore in Stuttgart.

For Sony Classical, Antonello Manacorda and the Kammerakademie Potsdam have released recordings of Mendelssohn’s five symphonies, a cycle of all Schubert’s symphonies (Echo Klassik 2015 in the category ‘Orchestra of the Year’) and Mozart’s last three symphonies (Opus Klassik 2022 in the category ‘Orchestra of the Year’). A complete recording of Beethoven’s symphonies, which have long played an important part in the Kammerakademie Potsdam’s concert repertory, was released in May 2024.