OLEG CAETANI
Conductor

Oleg Caetani made his Australian debut in 2001 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and was immediately appointed Chief Conductor Designate for 2003 and 2004. In January 2005 he has taken up the position of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of this orchestra.

Opera and concert conductor, he considers these two aspects of his work equally important.

He has a particularly deep relationship with the Staatskapelle Dresden that he conducted since more then three decades ( the first time he was twenty years old)and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi with whom he has also made a large South America Tour. Together they have recorded the first complete cycle ever been done in Italy of the whole Shostakovish symphonies. The 5 & 6 Symphonies has had two prizes 10/10 Classical Today’s in Usa and ffff Telerama in France and the 11 Symphony 10/10 Classical Today’s in Usa and France.

Last April 2008 Oleg Caetani has conducted in Eurovision, with the Verdi Orchestra a concert offered by the Italian President to the Pope Benedetto XVI in Vatican.

In 2001 he made his debut at the Scala with Turandot where he came back in 2005 to conduct Otello. He opened the season 2001 of the Theatre of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino with Don Pasquale. Recent engagements have included A Masked Ball in Berlin, Il trovatore in Helsinki, Otello in Dresden, Khovanschina and Sir John In love by Vaughan Williams in London at the English National Opera, Verdi’s Requiem with the Accademia di Santa Cecilia , the Magic Flute and Norma in San Francisco, Simon Boccanegra in Trieste (opening of the season 2003/4), Golden Cockerel in Toulouse, L’Enfant et les sortileges at the Théatre des Champs Elysée in Paris, The Girl of the Golden West in Seattle and Melbourne, The Flying Dutchman in Rome, L’amore dei Tre Re by Montemezzi in Turin, Benvenuto Cellini in Strasbourg, Cavalleria rusticana e Pagliacci in Houston and several concerts with different orchestras (including Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, San Carlo Orchestra Napoli, Hallé Orchestra Manchester, Orchestre National de Radio France, the Sydney Symphony, the Rai National Orchestra in Turin, the Orchestre National de Lyon etc.)

With the Melbourne Symphony he is recording for Chandos and their Tansman’s cds have won (all of them ) the Diapason d’or. In 2007 they have toured Europe together. It was the first apparence of an Australian symphonic orchestra in Paris, Madrid, Berlin and Milan.

In the next seasons Caetani will conduct two productions at the Opera in Köln, La Fanciulla del west in Sydney and different concerts with the Orchestra della Radio Svizzera Italiana, the Verdi Orchestra in Milan and with them also a tour in Spain, the Konzerthaus Orchester in Berlin, the Metropolitan Orchestra in Tokyo, the Rai National Orchestra in Turin, the Sydney Symphony, the Orchestre national de Lyon, the Hong Kong Philharmonic etc.

It has been Nadia Boulanger to discover his talent and to initiate him to music. At the Rome Conservatory Santa Cecilia he attended the class of conducting with Franco Ferrara next to the composition course wih Irma Ravinale. Here at seventeen years old he made his theatre debut with a production around Monteverdi’s “Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda“. After that time he went to the Moscow Conservatory to study conducting with Kondraschin and musicology with Nadieschda Nikolaewa. He graduated as conductor at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Ilya Mussin.

Winner of the RAI Turin competition and Karajan Competition in Berlin, he started his career at the Berlin State Opera “Unter den Linden” as repetiteur and assistant of Otmar Suitner. Since then he has been Chief Conductor at the German National Theatre in Weimar, First Conductor at the Frankfurt Opera House, Music Director first at the Wiesbaden Opera House, later at the Chemnitz Opera House and of the Robert Schumann Philharmonic Orchestra. During these years he was already a guest conductor by orchestras like Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Gewandhausorchester, Wiener Symphoniker (with whom he has recorded “Poliuto” by Donizetti for Emi-Cbs), Yomiuri, Orchestre National de France etc.