The Song of the Earth

Italian conductor Giuseppe Mentuccia has appeared at renowned venues such as the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He has worked with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, James Levine, Simon Rattle, Ivan Fischer, Zubin Mehta, Christian Thielemann and Myung-Whun Chung. Giuseppe Mentuccia was Daniel Barenboim’s musical assistant from 2018 until the end of his term as General Music Director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. He jumped in for him with great success in the 2021/22 season in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Così Fan Tutte as part of the prestigious Festtage at the Lindenoper. In the 2024/2025 season, Giuseppe Mentuccia will conduct Puccini’s Turandot and Tosca, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Verdi‘s Rigoletto and Aida at the Frankfurt Opera, and Puccini‘s Tosca at Theater St. Gallen. In the 2025/2026 season, he will conduct Verdi‘s Falstaff, Mozart‘s The Magic Flute, Puccini‘s Tosca and Bellini‘s Norma at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Passioned about education and outreach, Giuseppe Mentuccia is the musical director and curator of the Opernkinderorchester, a project in collaboration with the twelve district music schools of the city of Berlin and the Staatskapelle Berlin. He pursued his interest in the relationship between philosophy and music in his dissertation on the Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache, entitled “Phenomenology and the Musical Vision of Sergiu Celibidache”. Giuseppe Mentuccia is a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and holds both his Masters and doctoral degrees from the Juilliard School.

Iván Fischer founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra in 1983 together with Zoltán Kocsis. Thanks to its innovative approach to music and the uncompromising dedication of its musicians, the BFO has become the youngest ensemble to join the world’s top ten symphony orchestras. They are both present at the most important international concert venues and streaming platforms. The BFO has been recognized by the prestigious British Gramophone magazine three times: in 1998 and 2007 for the best recording, while in 2022 they were named Orchestra of the Year. The BFO’s most considerable successes are connected to Mahler: their recording of Symphony No. 1 was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2013. The BFO has also made a name for itself with its series of innovative concerts. The Autism-friendly Cocoa Concerts, the Surprise Concerts, Midnight Music performances, free open-air concerts in Budapest and the Community Weeks are all unique in their own ways. Another special feature of the orchestra is that its members regularly form a choir at their concerts. Each year, the BFO stages an opera production directed and conducted by Iván Fischer. The performances have been invited to the Mostly Mozart Festival, Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi, the Edinburgh International Festival and the Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg; in 2013, the Marriage of Figaro led the New York Magazine’s list of the best classical music events of the year. The Vicenza Opera Festival, founded by Iván Fischer, debuted in the fall of 2018 at the Teatro Olimpico.