Roberto Abbado

Roberto Abbado, awarded the prestigious “Premio Abbiati” by the Italian Music Critics Association for his “accomplished interpretative maturity, the extent and the peculiarity of a repertoire where he has offered remarkable results through an intense season”, has been appointed by the Korean National Symphony Orchestra as its next Music Director starting in 2026. He is currently the Chief Conductor of the Filarmonica del Teatro Comunale di Bologna.

He was Music Director of the Münchner Rundfunkorchester from 1991 to 1998, of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia from 2015 to 2019, of the Festival Verdi in Parma from 2018 to 2022.

He has worked with many orchestras, including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouworkest, the Wiener Symphoniker, the Orchestre national de France, the Orchestre de Paris, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Gewandhausorchester and the MDR-Sinfonieorchester (Leipzig), the NDR Sinfonieorchester (Hamburg), the Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester (Stockholm), the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia, the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, the Filarmonica della Scala, the Orchestra of Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the New World Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, the Korean National Symphony Orchestra and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.

Roberto Abbado has conducted numerous world premieres and new opera productions at the most prestigious theatres and festivals, including the Metropolitan Opera House in New York; the Wiener Staatsoper; La Scala; the Bayerische Staatsoper; the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino; the Deutsche Oper Berlin; the Teatro Regio of Turin; the Opéra Garnier in Paris; the Rossini Opera Festival; the Teatro Comunale in Bologna; the Festival di Spoleto; and the Festival Verdi in Parma.

A passionate interpreter of contemporary music, Abbado’s repertoire includes composers like Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna, Goffredo Petrassi, Sylvano Bussotti, Niccolò Castiglioni, Azio Corghi, Ivan Fedele, Luca Francesconi, Giorgio Battistelli, Michele dall’Ongaro, Giacomo Manzoni, Salvatore Sciarrino, Fabio Vacchi, Pascal Dusapin, Henri Dutilleux, Olivier Messiaen, Alfred Schnittke, Hans Werner Henze, Helmut Lachenmann, John Adams, Ned Rorem, Christopher Rouse, Steven Stucky, Charles Wuorinen and Silvia Colasanti.

Previous engagements also include La Favorite at the Salzburg Festival (starring Juan Diego Flórez and Elīna Garanča); two openings of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna with Macbeth (staged by Bob Wilson) and Parsifal (staged by Romeo Castellucci); La traviata (staged by Ferzan Özpetek) on a tour to Hong Kong with the Teatro di San Carlo of Naples, Rigoletto and Lucia di Lammermoor at New York Metropolitan; Simon Boccanegra on a tour to Hong Kong with Turin’s Teatro Regio; La traviata at the Shanghai Opera House; Lucia di Lammermoor at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris; Don Pasquale at Ópera de Bilbao; Le siège de Corinthe at the Rossini Opera Festival.

More recently he conducted Lucrezia Borgia and Madama Butterfly at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma; Lucia di Lammermoor and Roberto Devereux at the Teatro Massimo di Palermo; at the Festival Verdi in Parma Macbeth, Un ballo in maschera (Gustavo III), La forza del destino and the Divertissements from Nabucco - premiered in modern times in a symphonic concert and recorded for the album Vive Verdi! French Rarities and Discoveries; La Cenerentola at the LA Opera, Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Paris Opera, the world premiere of Fabio Vacchi’s Janus, Norma at the Seoul Arts Center, Puccini’s Trittico in Bologna and Bianca e Falliero at the Rossini Opera Festival and Macbeth (French version) at the Festival Verdi in Parma.

Among the engagements for the 2025/2026, in addition to several appointments in Seoul with the Korean National Symphony Orchestra, are: Otello in a new production staged by Federico Tiezzi at the Festival Verdi in Parma; Lucia di Lammermoor at the Wiener Staatsoper, and a series of symphonic concerts in Bologna with the Filarmonica del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Treviso with the Orchestra Regionale Filarmonia Veneta, Parma and Ferrara with the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini.

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