Michele Mariotti has been Music Director of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma since 2022.
Recipient of the 36th Abbiati Prize as Best Conductor, he is a guest at major Italian and international theaters and festivals. Among these are La Scala in Milan, the Opéra de Paris, the Wiener Staatsoper, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, the Salzburg Festival, the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the Verdi Festival in Parma, Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Los Angeles Opera, the Wexford Festival, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, and the Teatro Real in Madrid.

He has appeared on the podium of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Orchestre National de France, Münchner Symphoniker, RAI National Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Bamberger Symphoniker, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest, Gürzenich Orchester Köln, Filarmonica della Scala, and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, to name just a few.

He collaborates with leading directors such as Mario Martone, David McVicar, Emma Dante, Davide Livermore, Damiano Michieletto, Robert Carsen, Simon Stone, Michael Mayer, Herbert Fritsch, Benedict Andrews, Tobias Kratzer, Johannes Erath, Claus Guth, and Deborah Warner.

From 2008, he served first as Principal Conductor and then as Music Director until 2018 at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, where he led numerous symphonic concerts and dozens of opera productions, including La bohème directed by Graham Vick, which won the “Franco Abbiati” critics’ prize for Best Production of 2018. He also conducted the Orchestra and Chorus of the Comunale di Bologna on tour in several Italian cities and in Tokyo, Moscow, and Paris.

Among his most recent engagements are his debut at the Wiener Staatsoper with Il barbiere di Siviglia and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival with a new production of Moïse et Pharaon. He also conducted Rossini’s Maometto II and Verdi’s Otello at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, bringing Otello to the Aix-en-Provence Festival; Macbeth at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia; La Bohème at the Opéra de Paris; Guillaume Tell at La Scala; Ermione at the Rossini Opera Festival; and Dialogues des Carmélites, Aida, Boito’s Mefistofele, Tosca, the project Trittico Ricomposto, and Peter Grimes at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, as well as a tour in Japan with the theater’s Chorus and Orchestra. He has conducted the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Gürzenich Orchester Köln at the Cologne Philharmonie, the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Tonkünstler Orchestra at the Musikverein in Vienna, and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.

In the 2024/25 season, he will conduct symphonic concerts in Italy and across Europe at the Teatro di San Carlo, the Royal Concertgebouw, LAC Lugano, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and with the Haydn Orchestra in a three-year project. At the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, he will conduct Simon Boccanegra (season opening), Tosca, Suor Angelica, and Luigi Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero (for the Trittico Ricomposto project), West Side Story by Bernstein at the Baths of Caracalla, and Norma at the Wiener Staatsoper.

Michele Mariotti completed his humanities studies and graduated in composition from the Rossini Conservatory in his hometown of Pesaro, where he also studied orchestral conducting under Manlio Benzi. At the same time, he earned his diploma in conducting from the Accademia Musicale Pescarese under Donato Renzetti.

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