Orchestra Conductor

Claudio Scimone is the founder and conductor of the “I Solisti Veneti” [The Soloists of Veneto]. He is a guest conductor with many of the major international orchestras and the Honorary Conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon. He studied with Dimitri Mitropoulos and Franco Ferrara.

He has gained an outstanding international reputation. He has been the conductor at Covent Garden in London, at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, at the Opera in Zurich, in Rome, New York, Macerata and Melbourne, among others. He has conducted many symphonic orchestras, including the Philharmonia and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, the Mostly Mozart Orchestra in New York and the Orchestras of French Radio in Paris. In addition, he has been the conductor for the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, the Bamberger Symphoniker, all the major orchestras in Montreal, Dallas, Toronto, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Monte Carlo and Nice, as well as the English Chamber Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. He has conducted concerts by “I Solisti Veneti” – who come from Padua, his birthplace – in more than 50 countries and at all of the principal international festivals, making it one of the most prestigious and celebrated groups in the world. He is a regular guest on the most important Italian and foreign television networks and he has been at the centre of some of the most significant films and television programmes with a specifically musical content. Among these are François Reichenbach’s “Vivaldi, Painter of Music” and “The Seven Last Words of Christ”, based on the music of Haydn and filmed in the Cappella degli Scrovegni with the director Ermanno Olmi. He has received many awards in addition to the Grammy. Among these are the “Prix Mondial du Disque” [World Prize for Records] from Montreux, the Caecilia Prize from the Belgium Musical Press Association and the “Premio della Critica Discografica Italiana” [Italian Record Critics’ Prize]. Moreover, the “Grand Prix International du Disque dell’Académie Charles Cros” [the Charles Cros Academy’s International ‘Grand Prix’ for Records] and the Prize of the “Académie du Disque Lyrique” [Opera Record Academy] have been given to him many times. He has also been decorated with the Elisabeth Memorial Medal in London and the “Medaglia d’oro dei benemeriti dell’arte e della cultura” [the Gold Medal of Merit in Art and Culture] by the Italian state. Great interest has been stimulated by his recordings of Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso, Cantone in Ustica [Cato in Ustica], Albinoni’s Pimpinone and Nascimento dell’Aurora [Birth of Aurora] and Galoppi’s Caduta di Adamo [Adam’s Fall].

For the Fondazione Arena di Verona, he has conducted Salieri’s Le Danaidi [The Danaides] with the director Pier Luigi Pizzi and has appeared in the summer season of the Arena giving many performances of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia. In the summer of 2007 at the Arena, he will again conduct Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

June 2007