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 2005 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. At the Salzburg Festival he has appeared with them since 2017 in staged productions of Ariodante, Alcina, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Orfeo ed Euridice and La clemenza di Tito, in concert performances of La donna del lago, La clemenza di Tito and Haydn’s L’anima del filosofo and in several concerts. He has also conducted Les Musiciens du Prince at Salzburg in a marionette production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in 2023, and in a performance of Mozart’s Mass in C minor in 2024.
Other important past projects have included Il matrimonio segreto and Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno in Cologne; the Christmas Oratorio and L’elisir d’amore in Hamburg; Ariodante, Il turco in Italia, La Cenerentola, Alcina and La clemenza di Tito — all with Les Musiciens du Prince — in Monte Carlo and on tour; Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste in Rome; Il matrimonio segreto at the Dutch National Opera; Guillaume Tell at the Chorégies d’Orange; Il barbiere di Siviglia in Palermo; Mozart’s Requiem in Bari; L’elisir d’amore in Madrid; La Cenerentola and Iphigénie en Tauride in Zurich; Cimarosa’s Il maestro di cappella in a double-bill with Wolf-Ferrari’s Il segreto di Susanna in Genoa; Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater in Lucerne; Le nozze di Figaro and Ariodante in Moscow; and Alcina in Florence.
Recent engagements have also included La Cenerentola in Zurich, Munich, Vienna and Florence; L’italiana in Algeri in Zurich; Il barbiere di Siviglia and L’elisir d’amore in Monte Carlo and Vienna; L’Orfeo, La clemenza di Tito, Das Rheingold, the Christmas Oratorio and Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine in Monte Carlo; Giulio Cesare in Monte Carlo and Vienna and in concert on tour; Semele and Norma in Munich; Don Pasquale in Vienna; and Orfeo ed Euridice in Valencia and in concert on tour.
