Sir Antonio Pappano

Music Director, Royal Opera House

Sir Tony Pappano has held the prestigious role of music director at the Royal Opera House since 2002 and is one of the genre’s most influential tastemakers and spokesmen. The ‘unstoppable maestro’ has conducted a range of works at the Royal Opera House, including Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Wagner, Shostakovich, Britten and Berg, in addition to pieces for The Royal Ballet and world premieres of Turnage’s Anna Nicole and Birtwistle’s The Minotaur. As the son of Italian immigrants, Pappano was born in Essex and grew up on a council estate, but moved to America at the age of 13 when he began his music career as a piano accompanist. While he worries that audiences’ attention spans are on the wane, he admits that his busy schedule wouldn’t allow him to sit through a complete Ring cycle, ‘but I can conduct one’. In 2012, Pappano received a knighthood, and in 2015 he received a Gold Medal from the Royal Philharmonic Society. 

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