Corrado Rovaris

Conductor Corrado Rovaris, the longtime music director of Opera Philadelphia, is a specialist in bel canto and verismo operatic repertory. He is also the music director of the Artosphere Festival Orchestra in Arkansas. Rovaris was born in Bergamo, Italy, and grew up there in a musical family. He attended the Milan Conservatory graduating with degrees in composition, organ, and harpsichord but switched to conducting. In 1992, he landed a position as the assistant chorus master at the famed La Scala Opera House in Milan, remaining there until 1996. During this period, he made his operatic conducting debut, leading a production of Baldassare Galuppi's Il filosofo di campagna mounted by the Associazione Lirica e Concertistica Italiana. He was invited to conduct at Florence's Teatro Communale and the Rossini Opera Festival; these slots led to frequent guest appearances at houses around Italy, including the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, La Scala, and the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome. Those, in turn, generated international invitations at Opera Monte Carlo, the Japan Opera Foundation, and, in 1999, the Philadelphia Opera, in a production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, among other venues. Rovaris clicked with Philadelphia audiences, was invited back multiple times, and was named the company's first-ever music director in 2004. Opera Philadelphia celebrated 2019 as Rovaris' 20th anniversary with the company, where he remains music director. In Philadelphia, in addition to standard operatic repertory, Rovaris has championed new works, utilizing the opera's small new Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center for such operas as Charlie Parker's Yardbird by Daniel Schnyder. Rovaris also conducted "Glass Handel," an operatic art installation featuring the music of the two titular composers, Handel and Philip Glass, and co-produced by Opera Philadelphia and the Brooklyn, New York venue, National Sawdust. He has also conducted other North American companies, including the Canadian Opera Company, the St. Louis Opera, and the Santa Fe Opera, in multiple productions. Rovaris' career as an orchestral conductor stretched back to Italy with appearances leading the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Danish Radio Sinfonietta, and Rome's Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. In the U.S., Rovaris was named the music director of the Artosphere Festival Orchestra, the resident at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Rovaris' recording career dates back to 2007 when he led the Orchestra Internazionale d'Italia on a Dynamic-label recording of Mozart's Idomeneo. In 2011, he backed cellist Silvia Chiesa on a Sony Classical recording of Nino Rota's two cello concertos. His work has been heard on several other opera recordings, and in 2020, he backed tenors Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres, leading I Virtuosi Italiani on the Rossini duet album Amici & Rivali.
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